[Brewbud]

X2 on the camping pad insulation.  I secure it with a couple quick clamps or a tie down.  10 gallon batches hold temp with in a degree at 60 mins.  5 gallon batches lose a few degrees.

[zee]

i had planned on making essentially a gigantic tea cozy out of something so that i could just slip it on and off easily. what i haven't figured out yet is what to make it out of. luckily i have an industrial sewing machine for making boat sails, so i have some options.

[hopfenundmalz]

I use 2 layers of the foam camping pad insulation, held on with bunge cords.  The left over parts are big enough to put over the lid and add extra insulation there.

[bluesman]

Wow... alot of responses. 

I'm in the planning stages of building a Brutus 10 system, so I'll be swithing from a cooler with a braid to a recirculating system when the Brutus 10 is finished. It's going to take me a few months to get it all together...meaning the whole system.

[ggltd]

I found some neat stuff at Lowe’s in the flooring / carpet section. It’s a pack of interlocking grey squares of ¾” rigid foam used in exercise areas.  Interlock together, cut to the circumference of your tun and duct tape the seams to keep it together. You can also but seam and glue with crazy glue- it takes a few tubes.  I also put a strip of aluminum sticky tape around the bottom first because I use a propane burner.

[jds]

I have two different mash tuns. V1.0 is based on a 5-gallon igloo drink cooler with a SS braid in the bottom. It works great for 5 gallon beers up to 1.060 or so.

I also have a 60 qt rectangular Coleman Extreme with a CPVC manifold. It gets used for 10 gallon batches, high-gravity 5-gallon batches, and soon, for some no-sparge brewing I have planned.

I like the smaller cooler for the smaller mashes, as it seems to hold temperature better for small mashes than the same mash volume in the large cooler.  I expect it's because of the increased headspace in the Coleman.

As for the rest of the equipment, it consists of a jet burner on a wok stand, and a converted sanke keg that the good folks at New Belgium were kind enough to sell to me cheap because the coupling was too beat up to use.  No pumps, no stand, besides a folding table, and a few 5 gallon buckets for transferring water and wort. I like simple, although I can possibly see a tree-type gravity stand in my future.

That said, a few weeks ago, I brewed with a buddy who has a Blingmann BrewTree, with all the bells and whistles.  His brewdays seem pretty low-stress.

[jackfromjax]

Frustration with Mash Tun temperature drop led me down the inevitable path of system automation.  The first step was to add a pump, and recirculate the wort through an immersion chiller in the hot liquor tank, then on top of the grain bed (aka Herms).  Worked great, no insulation!  This was a slippery slope, however, and eventually led to another pump, two asco valves, a hard gas line, and two love temp controllers (ie Brutus).  No insulation though 

[Thirsty_Monk]

I use Reflectix insulation:

http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=13353-56291-ST16025&lpage=none

It is doing fair job and I use it around Electic HLT.