cooler math help

Can anyone help me figure out the volume of the grains and water so I can decide what size cooler I need?

I don't have a specific example I'm mostly looking for the calculation. I plan to do some 2.5G batches and 5G.

Thanks
Todd

How big of a beer might you be brewing? For five gallon batches, anything decent-sized will get you north of 12 or 13 pounds of grain, meaning that 5 gallons would be stretched (unless you use some DME for fermentables). If you're likely to get much above this level, you probably want to get a 10-gallon cooler.

Once you do AG, with all the work involved, I can't imagine only brewing 2.5 gallons; honestly, I would expect to be doing at least 5 gallons.

the_bird said:

How big of a beer might you be brewing? For five gallon batches, anything decent-sized will get you north of 12 or 13 pounds of grain, meaning that 5 gallons would be stretched (unless you use some DME for fermentables). If you're likely to get much above this level, you probably want to get a 10-gallon cooler.

Once you do AG, with all the work involved, I can't imagine only brewing 2.5 gallons; honestly, I would expect to be doing at least 5 gallons.

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I'm having some issues currently and the brew is not turning out perfect, my goal is for the short term to do some small batches till I can nail it down. Then go back up to the large batch, I hate having 2 cases of so so beer to drink. Currently we are ageraging about 15lbs a batch.

Do you know how to figure the volume of the grain? I'm batch sparging also.

I can always go back to the 70qt we currently use when I do full batches again. Could a to thin grain bed cause a lack of body?

If you plan on doing high gravity 5 gallon brews, you might want to get a 10 gallon cooler. For everything else, the 5 gallon will be fine. I can fit a max of 14 lbs of mashed grain in my 5 gallon cooler to get OG's above 1.070. Anything stronger than that and I scale down the volume of the brew.

I found a post that said 1 pound of grain takes up 10oz of volume, can anyone confirm?

Todd said:

I found a post that said 1 pound of grain takes up 10oz of volume, can anyone confirm?

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If so then it would be Fl oz not oz.

Todd said:

I found a post that said 1 pound of grain takes up 10oz of volume, can anyone confirm?

Click to expand...

Some grains are heavier or denser for a given volume than others, so this would at best be a generalization. Whether it is crushed or not may make a difference too.

If I had any grain, I'd be happy to tell you; I have plenty of graduated cylinders that would yield a reasonably accurate measurement. Don't happen to have any grain on hand right now, though.

beer4breakfast said:

Some grains are heavier or denser for a given volume than others, so this would at best be a generalization. Whether it is crushed or not may make a difference too.

If I had any grain, I'd be happy to tell you; I have plenty of graduated cylinders that would yield a reasonably accurate measurement. Don't happen to have any grain on hand right now, though.

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I'm in the same situation. If I based it off of two row should be fine since the majority of brews are based around that.

these calculators have always worked out well for me:

http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

Thanks..