Here's a view of the sparge setup. The mashtun is on an impromptu table - it's a large wooden cable spool. It was free - I found it in the back alley.
Water trickles from the HLT onto the grain bed, and sweet wort trickles from the mashtun to the boiler. Ball valves make it super easy to regulate the flow.
I don't bother with a fancy squirter at the end of the hose - I just let water slowly run over the top of the grain bed.
From this angle you can see the boiler on the floor. All water and wort is gravity-fed through food grade vinyl braided hose. No splashing, no HSA! I stop sparging when the runoff SG is under 1.010.
Sparging efficiency is typically 78% (using SUDS numbers) for this system.
Here's the boil. It's a bit full. For this session I left my sparge setup for an hour to play ball hockey, and came back to about 14.5 gals of run-off. Whoops. The 66K BTU burner takes about 45 minutes to bring the wort to boil.
I use an immersion chiller because it's easy (and it was cheap). Picures later!
After chilling, my brew buddy and I lift the boiler onto the spool/table, and drain the wort into fermenters.
A shot of the boiler interior after draining. There's a 1/2" to 3/8" compression elbow, a short piece of 3/8" copper pipe, and a length of SS braided hose clamped on to filter out hops and trub. Seems to do a reasonable job, if I use whole hops. Pellets go through this setup. If I tip the boiler I get all but about a litre of wort out.
Using the SS braided hose was easy, and much cheaper than an EZ-masher or false bottom.
