My Mash Is Bigger Than My Cooler

I made a minor miscalculation when developing a Belgian dark strong ale recipe to try. I already bought the grains and yeast. The problem is I have a round 5 gallon cooler and this works out to be 19.5 lbs or grain. According to Can I Mash It? I can fit only about 12 lbs in the cooler.

I figure I have four options:

1) I could make a smaller batch, but spending 5 hours brewing to come up with one case of beer seems like a waste of time

2) Split the grains in half and do two mashes which unfortunately adds another 1 1/2 hours to my brew day.

3) Find another style that will work with the Belgian Strong Ale yeast that I picked up so it doesn't go to waste.

4) Just forget about it, waste the yeast and move on to other things. I can redirect the grains to other recipes easily enough.

I eventually will move up in size so I can handle a 5 gallon capacity of a high gravity beer but I'm not ready to do that yet.

Any opinions?

If you haven't mixed your grains, I would suggest reducing the base malt until it fits, then make up the difference with extract. That would be about 5 lbs of DME.

That's how I've made my barley wines. I now have a 48 quart tun, but I won't be making a barleywine until the 2003 kicks.

5) Go out and get yourself a 10 gallon (or larger) cooler. Then your all set for high gravity 5 gallon batches or 10 gallon medium to low gravity brews.

david_42 said:

If you haven't mixed your grains, I would suggest reducing the base malt until it fits, then make up the difference with extract. That would be about 5 lbs of DME.

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Great suggestion. I hadn't thought of that.

How thick of a mash are you doing? What's the water-to-grain ratio? You may be able to drop that back a bit.

I'm not sure what the water-to-grain ratio is. How do I determine what this is/should be?

Here's a tentative recipe:
6lbs LME - Extra Light
5lbs 2-Row
5lbs Munich
1lb CaraMunich
.5lb Special B

.5oz Hallertau Northern Brewer 60min
1oz Hallertau Northern Brewer 20min
.25oz Tettnang 5min

Sorry if it's high jacking the thread or coat tailing but this is probably better than starting a new thread seeing that my question is almost similar;

I just bought everything to build a three gallon mini-MLT and was previously brewing only half batches (I know, I know just focus on the question) but am now moving up to five gallon brews

What beers (if any) using partial mash methods can I brew using the three gallon MLT without maxing voulmes in the cooler? Do I need to be careful about what recipes I purchase or can I scale them?

Just on a budget at the moment and can justify the upgrade to full batch but not a new cooler at the moment....

mash thickness tells you the grain/water ratio. I looked and the "can I mash" calculator has a rate of 1.25 Quarts per Lb. as the default. I tried lowering it to .75 per 19 lbs. and came up with 5.08 gallons. That is pretty thick though.

As to lgtg's question. Play around with the brewing software programs to determine this. There are many free trials (some free programs) and they are pretty inexpensive to buy. Definately a good thing to use if you are formulating recipes.

BassBurner said:

I'm not sure what the water-to-grain ratio is. How do I determine what this is/should be?

Here's a tentative recipe:
6lbs LME - Extra Light
5lbs 2-Row
5lbs Munich
1lb CaraMunich
.5lb Special B

.5oz Hallertau Northern Brewer 60min
1oz Hallertau Northern Brewer 20min
.25oz Tettnang 5min

Click to expand...

I only see 11.5 lbs grain in there. (You don't need to mash the LME, just add it to the boil.)
It will be a bit tight, but you can fit that amount of grain in a 5g cooler.

-a.

If you don't want to go the partial mash route (by adding malt extract), you could also just reduce your batch volume. If you brewed a 3 gallon AG batch of that same recipe, you would need less than 12 lbs of grain which is quite workable in a 5 gallon cooler. This might be a more preferable option if you wanted to use the brew in a competition.

If it is just for personal enjoyment, I would probably go the partial mash route and make up some of the base malt using DME.

You could also, for this batch, use a brewing bucket to mash in.

Dennys Fine Consumptibles said:

You could also, for this batch, use a brewing bucket to mash in.

Click to expand...

I was going to make that suggestion, then I thought of something even more awesome...

Make it a double. Mash half the grains, then heat the wort back up to mashing temps, dump out the old grains, add the new grains, and remash with the wort. Sure, it still adds time to your brew day, however, at least you're doing it to replicate a cool old process rather than resigning yourself to equipment limitations. Randy Mosher talks about this in Radical Brewing and I am pretty excited at the thought of giving it a try...

If you try the double mash, I am guessing it will hurt your efficiency, so you'll probably still want a pound or two of DME to make up any deficiency there.


Otherwise, just buy a Walmart special cooler for $15 and put a SS braid in the bottom, run the tubing up over the top of the cooler and down the side. Siphon.

Well we have a 70qt Coleman Xtreme that I can convert to a batch sparge. I'll have to fiddle with how to set it up, because I want to easily break it down and switch it back to the regular cooler.

According to the Can I Mash It? calculator, I can mash up to 44lbs. :rockin: