[WiseWeasel]

My roommate was just using a burner and a pot to heat the water to the desired temp, and then he placed the hot water in a big insulated cooler, which keeps the temperature extremely stable for the hour or so while the warm water flows down into the sparging system in a second cooler holding the mash, unless I'm just completely confused about the process...

[shpxnvz]

Yeah, if you have a cooler that consistent and adjust your temp for the measured thermal mass of the cooler it would work fine. Mine loses about ten degrees per hour at mash temp, however, so I need to adjust the temp pretty continuously during mash.

Of course, another part of it is just my desire to hack together nifty gadgets. :-)