Cooler is too small for 10 gallon batches
 

On my last brew day I discovered that my cooler (10 gallon) was too small for a 10 gallon batch (30 lb grain bill). I hoping that everything turns out, the gravity didn't get as low as I would have liked but... Anyhow, moving forward, could I just split the grain in half and do 2 mashes? I'm not ready to spring for a huge mamma jamma cooler just yet but I want to continue doing 10 gallon batches.

Add extract to the boil if your OG isn't as high as you want it. I always keep 3-5lbs of DME in the freezer for these sorts of situations.

Great website to use to check and see if you'll have enough room. You can always mash thicker in order to get more grain in there. It's the water that really takes up the space and not as much the grain once it's good and saturated.
http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

the original gravity was okay about 1.06 but since the cooler was too small the mashing process was a mess and I might have mashed at too high of a temp or something. I'll just say that once it was discovered that the cooler could not hold all the grain, it got messy. Had to drain out a gallon or two to get the grain to fit. The final gravity ended up at 1.024. I did use liquid yeast but no starter and that could have been another problem?
Anyhow my main question, for this thread anyhow, is would it be possible to do the process of mash twice, boil once?

wow, that is a lot of grain for 10G of beer. I just had a 19.5lb grain bill for 10G of 1.057 beer and that would fit easy in a 10G cooler. Was this a big beer?


Edit, I see your gravity was ~ 1.060

my bad... 12 gallon batch actually

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f126/black-butte-porter-145879/

and my next one up is...

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/stone-xi-anniversary-clone-51521/

so I'm sure I'll be running into the same issues. I do plan on using yeast starters this time. I bought 2 vials because I wasn't sure if it was safe to try and stretch a single vial out that far.

Shouldn't you have gotten an OG closer to 1.080 with 30 lbs of grain?

??? dunno. it was technically 27.86 lbs.

you could mash at a 1.1qt/1lb at fit 27.5lbs in a 10G cooler. That is pretty thick but it can be done.