10 gallon batch - mash in 2 or 1?

My buddy and I are looking to do some 10 gallon brew days. We have keggles for HLT and brew pot, and we each have our own 10 gallon round converted coolers that we use to mash when we are brewing solo. We typically do single step batch sparges.
For a combo brew day are there advantages to using both coolers to mash essentially two five galling batches other than space? If gravity is low enough and we have the room are there any disadvantages to using one cooler?
Any better ways of using the equipment listed above?
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.

Advantages...one less cooler to clean.
Disadvantages...overfilled cooler spilling grain requiring multiple small sparges.

Depends on the size of the grain bill I'd imagine...guessing 24-26 lbs of grain w/ a double batch sparge is doable for a 10 gal cooler. Much more than that???

Can I mash it here might help....http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml/

Any difference on efficiency?

mr_randy_watson said:

Any difference on efficiency?

Click to expand...

No, unless the size of the cooler is too small for the grainbill. You can easily mash about 23 pounds of grain in a 10 gallon round cooler. If you're going to use more grain than that, using two coolers makes sense.

Thanks for the feedback! We'll plan accordingly.

I assume you're batch sparging? Just do a double sparge. Your mash water will definitely fit--it's the sparge water that might not. I'm actually brewing a 10-gallon batch with my 10-gallon cooler as we speak (it's on the burner now).

Here's what my water looked like: Mash: 4.5 gal, Sparge: 10 gal, Pre-boil total: 12.38.

All I did was split the sparge water, and everything went fine. Added 5 gallons twice, and that brought me about an inch below the brim on each one.