Quick Questions: Making Mash cooler and cleaning my pot

I am going to crap-mart tomorrow to buy my mash cooler. Do I need two or can I get away with one cooler. I understand some people use one for holding the sparge water? I am just a little confused on this part. I have a 5.5 gallon pot from my extract brewing. Can't I just use the pot to hold the sparge water? Or am I confused on a step...

Second question is ... What can/should I use to clean my aluminum brew pot. I found a 10 gallon for $50 and couldn't find any stainless steel pot that came close. So I have to figure out how to keep it clean..

I am after all on a college student budget

I searched numerous times and couldn't kept finding vauge answers to these questions. So I really appreciate any help.

Soap and water cleans most stuff pretty well. You can use your 5.5 gallon pot for heating strike and sparge water.

xalu said:

I am going to crap-mart tomorrow to buy my mash cooler. Do I need two or can I get away with one cooler. I understand some people use one for holding the sparge water? I am just a little confused on this part. I have a 5.5 gallon pot from my extract brewing. Can't I just use the pot to hold the sparge water? Or am I confused on a step...
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Dude. I hear ya. This confused the absolute hell out of me when I started. You don't need two coolers. And you can make amazing beer with only one. But you might want two.

What matters is the type of sparging you want to do:

One cooler will only allow you to batch sparge. Basically you drain the wort after mash in, and then use your pot to fill it up again to sparge. Here's the go-to resource for batch sparging in my opinion: dennybrew
I fly sparge myself and I get about 70% efficiency for most beers.


Two coolers will allow you to fly sparge. You store the sparge water in one cooler (the '2nd one') to keep it the same temp. As you sparge, the water flows into the mash tun from this 'hot liquor tank'. This not only requires a connecting tube, of course, but also that you match the rate of flow out of the hot liquor tank (2nd cooler), into the mash tun (1st cooler). Otherwise, the mash tun could over flow, or conversely, the sparge water wouldn't cover all the grain - resulting in poor efficiency.

Fly sparging is slightly more complicated, but done right it can result in better efficiency.

I suggest you start with what you have. But definitely research fly sparging. You can always switch later.

That's really the difference. Of course, you could also batch sparge while still using a 2nd cooler, but that's really pointless.

Thanks for the quick res ponces I get it now. I will stick with the one and grab a second when I can. Thanks again.

First of all, aluminum is just fine IMO. If its a new pot, I would just wash with soap and then fill with water and a little vinegar and boil it for about an hour. That will form a protective oxide on the surface. I clean mine with a non abrasive pad and detergent after use.
If you plan to batch sparge you can get by with one cooler for a mash tun. Heat strike water with your brewpot and collect your runnings in a bucket. Then use the brewpot to heat sparge water.
If you an afford it I would suggest getting a 10 gal. Igloo thermos for your sparge water. With this you would heat strike water in the brewpot, then during the mash, heat sparge water and put it into the 10 gal Igloo. First runnings are collected in the brewpot. This can then be heated during the sparge. (water taken from the 10 gal Igloo) Saves some time that way.

Good Luck

All Grain
This a great reference from Bobby M.

I copied a section below that might help you out. All you need to get started is a cooler, a kettle, and a HDPE bucket.The Single Kettle/Burner Method with a simple picnic cooler MLT:
First you're going to figure out based on your grain bill, how much water you'll need to make the ratio 1.25qts/lb. Example, if you have 12lb of grain 12 x 1.25 = 15 quarts or 3.75 gallons of "STRIKE" water.

Heat strike water in your kettle to ABOUT 185F and dump it into your cooler, then close the lid. Wow, doesn't that seem a bit hot? Your cooler is going to absorb quite a bit of heat in the first 5 minutes. Leave it alone with the cover closed to let it warm up. After 5 minutes, open it up and stir the water, then test the temp. You're going to want it to cool to about 168F. Remember, software will help you figure out exactly what temp to use. Once you reach your ideal strike temp, dough in (mix the crushed grains in thoroughly) then close the lid.

After 5 minutes, open the cooler, stir once more and check the temperature in various places. Again, you want it to settle to ABOUT 152F. If it's a degree or two high or low, it's OK. If it's off by more, you might want to compensate with a little cold or boiling water. Once you're satisfied, close the lid and wait 60 minutes.

After about 20 minutes, you'll want to start heating your sparge water in the kettle. You'll need ABOUT the same volume as your intended finished batch. If it's a 5 gallon batch, heat up 5 gallons of sparge water to 180F.

After the full 60 minute mash, open the drain valve on the MLT and collect 2 quarts of wort into a pitcher. Carefully return this back on top of the mash (this is vorlaufing), then drain the entire MLT into a bucket. If the bucket has graduation marks, take note how much wort you collected. You're going to find that you lost a good percentage of liquid to grain absorption. In our example, it's likely that you only got out 2.5 gallons from the 3.75 strike volume. Here's where you have to decide ultimately how much wort you want in the kettle to start with. You will boil off about 1.25 gallons in 60 minutes of vigorous boil so you'll want at least 6.5gallons to start with. To figure out how much to sparge with, take this pre boil figure (6.5) and subtract it from how much wort you collected out of the MLT for first runnings (say 2.5). This leaves you with 4 gallons. This is exactly how much you'll need to sparge with.

Assuming you got the sparge water up to 180F, pour about HALF of the required sparge volume into the MLT (in the example it will be 2 gallons. Stir it well for a couple minutes, vorlauf 2 quarts again, then collect it in the same bucket the first runnings are in.

Repeat step 6 again with the remaining sparge volume. At this point, you should have about 6.25 gallons in the bucket. You can also split this amount between two buckets to make handling them easier.

Remove any excess water from the kettle and carefully transfer all your wort from the buckets into the kettle. Stir this wort up and draw off a bit to measure your pre-boil gravity and take note of it. You'll also need an accurate measurement of how much volume you collected. Once you have these two numbers you can figure out your mash/lauter efficiency as explained earlier on this page.

Proceed as you normally would for an extract batch. You've just made your own wort without "instant beer".

I'll echo the above sentiments about 1 cooler vs 2. I actually have 2 simply because I fly sparge. If I was batch sparging, there would be no need for the other cooler I have.

Another note about boil kettles. I actually only scrub mine with water at the end of the brew day, and it's staying pretty clean. Before brewing with an aluminim pot, it's best to build up an oxide layer first: boil with water for about an hour and you'll see it lose its sheen. You only need to worry about getting rid of any soiled debris: the kettle itself is going to get sanitized as soon as you reach boil. The main thing you don't want to mix with aluminum is highly acidic solutions.