Mash tun strike water mixing

[TGTimm]

I'm trying to make our strike water mixer work better--it currently doesn't work well at all.

Our current set-up is a simple tee, with 1" hot and cold liquor lines coming in through the sides, and a 1 1/4" line from the boss to the tun. Valves are 1" full-port ball valves. The thermo mounts in a tee immediately after. This system is very difficult to control, and the thermo swings wildly with any change in the valves.

I'm planning on changing to a tee with the hot H2O in through the end and the cold H2O in from the boss, with the thermo mounted 8-10" downstream in the boss of another tee, at a 90 bend. I'm also thinking of making that 8-10" straight pipe into a mixing tube of sorts by soldering pieces of 12 ga. wire through the pipe. Anyone try this? Worth the trouble?

[germanbrewerjk]

Had the same problems a few years back... what i did was take a old 1/2 barrel keg weld on bottom and top a clamp fittings and on the side a port for the thermometer. I just put the keg right after the mixing tee and the first thermometer.
The keg helps to mix the water better and it works also as a buffer in case of any ups and down of water temps.

[gitchegumee]

Static mixer.....

This is what you want.... They work extremely well for just this situation. Best of luck!