I have started all grain 2.5 gallon BIB batches doing the same thing as below only with my water about split in half for both mash and BAG SPARGE (new term???) both done in the Gott cooler my question is how long do you let the bag sit in your sparge water before you pull it out and let drain, i have a large collander i can just put accros the cooler to put the bag in to let drain. this seems like a vary effective and cheap way to all grain
Yea I heat up the mash water in the Boil Kettle and then dump it into the MLT(Cooler) with a huge bag filled with my grains. After a 60-90 minute mash I lift the bag and let it drain back into the MLT, I guess this is my first runnings. Then in the BK I have 170F water waiting to Sparge/Mash out. Usually I mash in the 1.25-1.5 qt/lb range and then do a single sparge to get the rest of my volume.
ATM I'm getting 65% efficiency but I think I can get above 70% with a good crush and a little refinement. It was a super cheap setup that works reasonably well though I will probably be upgrading to a proper MLT cooler conversion in the future.
Mash
Sparge
Boil