Mash Tun too small?

I looked around and didn't see an answer to this question: What do you do if your mash doesn't fit in your mash tun?

I have a 5 gal beverage cooler I picked up from Home Depot for $10 (it was missing the spigot, which I intended to remove anyway).
So for my 2nd AG batch ever, I wanted to do the Stone Ruination clone from last month's Zymurgy.
Unfortunately, BrewTarget is telling me to put in :

• 4.87 gal for mash in
• 1.5 gal for mash out

Obviously, that's not going to fit, even before I add my 13lbs of grain.

So, how do I handle this situation?

• Mash in twice with 2.4 gal each, then mash out, and one sparge after?
• Separate mashes with 1/2 the grain and half the liquor? That would also require two sparges, right, which seems ... like more work than I want to do

I like the first one, because it seems easier, but will it work?

Thanks

Get a bigger tun?

OK, for a serious answer... I haven't figured out how to do this in brewsmith yet, but go with a thicker mash. 4.87 gallons is about 1.5gts/lb of grain, which is a pretty thin mash. If you went closer to 1qt/lb, you'd be going much thicker and you'd be likely to lauter much more slowly, but you'd be talking 3.25 gallons of water for mash - you'll be very close to the full volume of your tun, but you should just make it. You cannot split your mash into two volumes - the chemistry involved in conversion just won't work that way.

As for mash out, you can certainly do your 60 minute mash, lauter, and THEN go ahead and add your mash out volume, lauter, and proceed to go through your batch sparges (assuming you intend to batch sparge rather than fly sparge).

Thanks Strat.
The recipe calls for 1.41 qts/lb in the mash tun.

Just so I understand your suggestion though: I could mash with less water and sparge with more?

If the case, doesn't having less water in the mash and more in the sparge fiddle with the chemistry a bit?

I used a 5 gal tun for awhile and it just wasn't big enough for many 5 gal batches. I've done split mashes, done smaller batches, supplemented with a few lbs of DME, and finally broke down and got a ten gal tun. The most I ever mashed in the 5 gal was ~12 or so lbs and that was pushing it big time.

You could go with 1.2 quarts per pound of grain.

Green Bay Rackers have a handy "Can I Mash It?" calculator to help you play with the numbers.

jrubins said:

Thanks Strat.
The recipe calls for 1.41 qts/lb in the mash tun.

Just so I understand your suggestion though: I could mash with less water and sparge with more?

If the case, doesn't having less water in the mash and more in the sparge fiddle with the chemistry a bit?

Click to expand...

Not really - the chemistry that's important is what happens during the mash. So long as you have your grains in 1-1.5qts of water (at the appropriate temperature!) per lb of grain, the chemistry should pretty much take care of itself. And then yes, make up for the extra volume of water in your sparge, and you'll be good to go.

How large is your grain bill? I have a 5 gal rubbermaid cooler and a larger 8 gal cooler. I can get 14 lbs max in mt 5 gal cooler and its a pretty thick mash. About 18 lbs in the 8 gal cooler. I'm getting a much larger cooler!

If you were planning on batch sparging IMO get a bigger cooler. Your mash will be very thick and hard to stir and you will not fit all your sparge water needed without multiple steps. Your efficiency will suffer and you won't have fun!

It's all about the fun

I handled this exact situation thus: I demoted the 5gal mash tun to my hot liquor tank. I purchased a 10gal mash tun.

If you’re doing anything else, you’re cheating the must-buy-more-equipment homebrew Goddess. SHE does not like that, and will severely punish you for your disobedience - again and again.

You've been warned.

Mash thicker.

Double batch sparge should work for 13lbs in a 5 gal cooler....strike at 1.2 qt/lb or 15.6 qt...say 15 and then double batch sparge to reach preboil volume.

Mash thicker or make a 10-20% smaller batch.

TrubDog said:

How large is your grain bill? I have a 5 gal rubbermaid cooler and a larger 8 gal cooler. I can get 14 lbs max in mt 5 gal cooler and its a pretty thick mash. About 18 lbs in the 8 gal cooler. I'm getting a much larger cooler!

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14 lbs. I was trying to use the 1.41qt/lb mash thickness.

ipso said:

I handled this exact situation thus: I demoted the 5gal mash tun to my hot liquor tank. I purchased a 10gal mash tun.

If you’re doing anything else, you’re cheating the must-buy-more-equipment homebrew Goddess. SHE does not like that, and will severely punish you for your disobedience - again and again.

You've been warned.

Click to expand...

I hear that, but if I buy any more kit in the near future, I will raise the ire of the home goddess (i.e. my wife) and SHE will severely punish my for my disobedience (and not in a good way)

jrubins said:

I hear that, but if I buy any more kit in the near future, I will raise the ire of the home goddess (i.e. my wife) and SHE will severely punish my for my disobedience (and not in a good way)

Click to expand...

What you can do is get the same color cooler but larger – she may not notice the difference for quite a while. You can store the smaller one inside the larger one. Or perhaps more nefarious means:

“Holy moly honey, look what I found in the alley behind Joe’s place – a 10gal orange cooler! I can use it to keep my beer cool and store things in. But it has this funky pipe spigot on it and some kind of piece of metal in it. Maybe that’s just for letting the ice water out. I think I’m going to keep it."

Use dry erase markers and put some graffiti on it to make it look abandoned, (“City of X Road Worker’s&#8221, and maybe some coffee grounds and pieces of garbage stuck to it. Better yet – have her in the car when you “find” it!

Problem solved.

(Remember: Ninkasi and her sisters are watching. However she does say a 1.2qt/gal ratio is acceptable – as part of her master plan to have you start living with brewing compromises – always in pain – fueling your desire for more equipment. She WANTS you to suppress your desires, so they can grow and multiply! – just like her yeasty minions.)

You could brew smaller batches. My mash tun could probably handle a 15 gallon batch, but alas, my liver could not. Most of my batches are in the 2.5 G range, but there's really no good reason for the continued tyranny of the 5 gallon batch. If you insist on 5 gallons however, you could omit some base grain and supplement with extract. You could brew two 2.5 batches and ferment them as one. You could get 90%+ efficiency and lower your grain usage accordingly. As many before me have said, you could mash thicker and sparge more, although I think this would open the door to additional tannin extraction if you do not slightly acidify your later sparges in paler beers.

kingwood-kid said:

You could brew smaller batches. My mash tun could probably handle a 15 gallon batch, but alas, my liver could not. Most of my batches are in the 2.5 G range, but there's really no good reason for the continued tyranny of the 5 gallon batch. If you insist on 5 gallons however, you could omit some base grain and supplement with extract. You could brew two 2.5 batches and ferment them as one. You could get 90%+ efficiency and lower your grain usage accordingly. As many before me have said, you could mash thicker and sparge more, although I think this would open the door to additional tannin extraction if you do not slightly acidify your later sparges in paler beers.

Click to expand...

Are there convenient ways of 'downsizing' standard 5g recipes?
I'm using brewtarget, and it doesn't appear to support easy translation from 5g to any other size recipe.

Most software has a scaling option, where you change the batch size from 5 to whatever, and voila, all the ingredients change too. The only real changes from one batch size to the next (given the same equipment) are boil-off rate and the amount of wort you lose to dead space in your mash tun. Well, the dead space is the same, but it represents a biger proportionate loss in a smaller batch. I suppose the boil-off rate would have a small effect on hop utilization as well. Given the numerous inconsistencies from one batch to another in most homebrew systems, you can just multiply everything in your beer by 4/5 for a 4 gallon batch.

A thicker mash coupled with skipping the mash out and fly sparging with more water. I fly sparge by pouring with a pitcher over a piece of foil. Works just fine.

BeerSmith says that for a 13 lb grist and a 1.08 qt/lb water ratio you need 4.52 gallons of space. For 1.25 qt/lb you need just over 5 gallons. So, add 14-15 quarts and mash in, then fly sparge with 4.6 to 4.8 gallons (or however much you need to get your desired boil level). You should be good to go with that.