German Brewing

I'm thinking it would be nice to convert my 10gal boilermaker into a proper mash tun. My initial thoughts were find a way to punch a hole in the lid so I can have tubing going from the ball valve (under a false bottom) and returning through the lid under the water line and buy a pump. But, to be honest, I have no idea where to begin with purchases or how I would alter the lid (if that's even the best approach). Any thoughts?

A drill and a bulkhead should do the trick. I do all my own metalworking and while stainless is an absolute bear to work with, its do able.

For punching the holes into stainless steel I'd strongly recommend one of .

For drilling the pilot hole you really want the drillbit in cobalt.

For the fittings, fittings aren't a bad choice.

Enjoy

Appreciate the input - Hell a beater lid (and preserving the original would be ideal if I could find one. Does anyone know of any shops that will custom make these?

If I'm reading correctly, the diameter of the interior for the 10g boilermaker is 13.9 inches.

, closest size I could find. The edges will come up a bit, but will still sit against the side well and cover a majority of the mash surface. Not perfect, but good.

There's a lot of 12" ss cake pans out there. I don't feel that perfectly sealing to the pot is necessary, .5" on both sides won't let much o2 in.

The wine industry uses . They are not as dear as one might suspect. Definitively cheaper than a new lid for a Blichmann pot and they are available in a large selection of diameters.

Either that, or I'd use a with a PRV on the lid. Since they sealed it's not an issue injecting inert gas to form a gas blanket on the remaining headspace. The Thermoports are already insulated, so thats an added bonus.

A 12" cake pan covers a surface area of 113 sq inches, whereas the amount of wort surface area on the 13.9" diameter boilermaker is nearly 152 sq inches. So the 12" cake pan actually only covers about 75% of the surface area.

This is what I used in my 13-5/8" kettle..
Homichef HOM490034 13.5” lid (14" od)
With simple massaging you can rebend the lip to custom fit your 13.9 pot pretty easy. Check out my post in DIY mash caps to see how.

Now that I look again they make a 14-1/8" lid and the vertical edge is 1/4" less then the advertised diameter so it might actually be a perfect fit after bending the outer lip back to vertical. This is no problem with the malleable ss these lids are made from.