I want to graduate to bigger beers

I've been doing AG brews for a while using a 30-quart cooler with a SS braid setup for my MLT and doing boils in a 7-1/2 gallon SS pot on a propane burner. I'd like to graduate to some hardier brews that start off with somewhere between 15 and 20 lbs of grain and higher gravity and still get a 5-gallon batch.

Should I look to get a 15 gallon SS MLT pot with a false bottom for the big bucks and do my mash in that? Or is that the wrong way to go and maybe I should just get a bigger cooler for a MLT and a bigger boiling pot?

I'm looking for feedback here before I go off and spend the cash

thanks - Mark

According to this calculator you can fit 19 lbs of grain into your current mash tun mashing at 1.25 qts/lb. You could make up the difference in any of those 20lbs/grain recipes with a bit of DME if you didn't want to get a new mash tun at all.

I'm still in the process of researching for my jump to AG, so I don't really know about other stuff and I may be overlooking things like changing mash thickness for a big beer, but thought I'd share that link with you in case you hadn't seen it before.

Amazon has a 10 gal SS pot for $109. You could then use your current 7.5 gal. pot for mashing grains. You could also split recipes between the 7.5 gal pot and your current cooler. You could just add DME at the end of the boil for higher gravity. A larger brew pot, though, would reduce the chance of boil over too. Amazon has a 15 gal. pot for $119 too. Pretty good prices.

Thanks for the replies, guys.

The problem with shoving all that grain into my current MLT is that there is no space left for mashout (which becomes the first sparge). With all that grain and water in there, I imagine (haven't calculated, though) that the mashout would be somewhere around 2 or 3 gallons. Just for the sake of handling all that grain and water and general futzing around I'm pretty sure I need to go bigger.

Do either of you (or anybody) mash in a standard pot or a false-bottom pot without adding heat during conversion? If that can be done, I'd be ok with going with the bigger pot/false bottom method. I'd hate to invest that money, though, and find out that my conversion sucks because I don't have a heater and pump system set up.

Maybe DME is the way to go. I could mash the specialty/roasted grains and some of the pail and then add enough DME to the boil to bring up the SG. Its not like I'm exclusively AG at all.

If there are more ideas please keep them coming. I'm itching to try something like this after my batch of wheat gets done this next weekend.

thanks - Mark

MarkSheffield said:

Do either of you (or anybody) mash in a standard pot or a false-bottom pot without adding heat during conversion? If that can be done, I'd be ok with going with the bigger pot/false bottom method. I'd hate to invest that money, though, and find out that my conversion sucks because I don't have a heater and pump system set up.

Click to expand...

You don't necessarily need a pump and a heater. A SS kettle with false bottom can easily be direct fired to maintain mash temperatures. I find that I only have to fire my Sanke MLT, which is wrapped with a surplus wool blanket, once at most during a 60 min conversion. Go with a SS kettle and your brewery will have to room to grow!

yeah, I use a 5 gallon igloo cooler to mash and I've decided it's best not to go over 15 lbs of grain in that thing.

I use a 10 gallon cooler from home depot with SS braid for mashing. That would allow you to go with the 20 lbs of grain and still get up to about a 2 gallon mash-out/first batch sparge. It's about fifty bucks, as far as I can tell. Works great for me. With about 8 lbs of grain in there it holds temperature for a full 1-hour mash, even with all that dead space.

WoweeZowee - How long to you fire-up under the kettle when you do that? Better yet, can you explain your process - you see the temp drop a little, fire it up, hold it for so long, etc?

if you want to go cheap, go with a bigger cooler.

shadowmage36 said:

I use a 10 gallon cooler from home depot with SS braid for mashing. That would allow you to go with the 20 lbs of grain and still get up to about a 2 gallon mash-out/first batch sparge. It's about fifty bucks, as far as I can tell. Works great for me. With about 8 lbs of grain in there it holds temperature for a full 1-hour mash, even with all that dead space.

Click to expand...

Have you actually mashed 20 lbs of grain in your 10 gallon cooler? I put 14 in a few weeks ago and it was damn full. I would hate to try and get anymore grain than 15lbs into mine.

OK, I decided to go cheap & easy

I just ordered a 70 quart cooler from Walmart online - $20 plus $.97 shipping.

How can I go wrong? Thank God for China.

I'll get a 15 or 20 gallon pot somewhere and that will do me for the time being.

MarkSheffield said:

WoweeZowee - How long to you fire-up under the kettle when you do that? Better yet, can you explain your process - you see the temp drop a little, fire it up, hold it for so long, etc?

Click to expand...

Before mash-in I heat my strike water in the sanke MLT. This heats up in the MLT steel and wool insulation and is an absolutely required step to maintain stable mash temps. After mash-in, it takes about 10 min for the grain temp to stabilize. I stir the mash well two or three times during this period. When the mash is at the correct temp, I put on the lid and walk away for about a half hour to 40 min. At this point I will check the mash temp - usually it isn't lower than a degree of my target. For example, if it were three degrees low, I would fire the MLT and stir until I see a rise of about 2 degrees. I would then kill the flame and stir until the mash is stabilized at the correct temp and put the lid back on. Most batches I don't need to fire the MLT during the rest. The next time I fire the MLT is for mash-out.

The sanke MLT wrapped with a surplus wool blanket has been working well for me, and I plan to keep the insulation when I get my new brew stand built.