Some questions for mash tun cooler and all grain brewing

Hi,

1. What size cooler for a mash tun would sufficiently brew 5gal batches at 6% or less alcohol?

2. I live in the Canada and cannot find the coolers anywhere except Wal-Mart. They have a 36 Quart Xtreme® Cooler for $42 CAN. I have a question about the cooler. Honestly it doesn't look like it holds 9 Gal (compared to the fermenting buckets I have). I looked quickly.. but maybe the square size plays tricks with the eyes?

3. I would like to brew once every 2 or 3 months. Thus I would like to brew two recipes on the same day. I'm not apposed to buying 2 mash tuns if that would help it.. like.. if you wanted to do 2 recipes on one day, how would juggle stuff around? What other stuff would you want to buy. I want to do only 5 gal batches.

4. There is mash water and sparge water. Some videos will have two separate boils for each water. What is the difference between the two waters? I've never seen an explanation. So the water boils at 175 degrees and sits in the mash tun with grain for an hour and cools down to 155 degrees. It then drains into a pot. But why are there two different waters in the beginning? I don't understand and can't find an answer.

5. I really do not want to Keg. I would like to bottle. Will the flavor of the beer change if I prime each bottle with corn sugar as apposed to using a keg?

Thanks!

take a look at this calculator, about half way down you will see one that says "can i mash it?" http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

2. 36 quarts is fine for 5 gallon batches

3. do one 5 gallon batch first, then start thinking about doing 2 batches in a day.

4. mash water gets your grains in the 150F range and sits in your cooler for an hour.
then, you will drain off the mash (1st runnings), and add more water to get your grains to about 168F, then drain which rinses the grains off. You should read Palmer's book, "how to brew"

5. read Revvy's tips on bottling. you can find it on this website, just search around. sugar will not change the flavor of your beer, the yeast will eat it and turn it to Co2, just takes longer than forcing Co2 via kegging.

Hi,

1. What size cooler would sufficiently brew 5gal batches at 6% or less alcohol?

2. I live in the Canada and cannot find the coolers anywhere except Wal-Mart. They have a 36 Quart Xtreme® Cooler for $42 CAN. I have a question about the cooler. Honestly it doesn't look like it holds 9 Gal (compared to the fermenting buckets I have). I looked quickly.. but maybe the square size plays tricks with the eyes?

3. I would like to brew once every 2 or 3 months. Thus I would like to brew two recipes on the same day. I'm not apposed to buying 2 mash tuns if that would help it.. like.. if you wanted to do 2 recipes on one day, how would juggle stuff around? What other stuff would you want to buy. I want to do only 5 gal batches.

4. There is mash water and sparge water. Some videos will have two separate boils for each water. What is the difference between the two waters? I've never seen an explanation. So the water boils at 175 degrees and sits in the mash tun with grain for an hour and cools down to 155 degrees. It then drains into a pot. But why are there two different waters in the beginning? I don't understand and can't find an answer.

5. I really do not want to Keg. I would like to bottle. Will the flavor of the beer change if I prime each bottle with corn sugar as apposed to using a keg?

Thanks!

1. a 5 gallon cooler will hold about 13lbs of grain max. That'll get you 6% ABV

2. its probably 36qt to the lip. that'd be enough. square sizes do fool ya.

3. either a really long brew day, or look into partigyle brewing, and maybe an even larger mash tun cooler.

4. water doesn't boil at 175F on planet Earth. you heat mash water to around 170, and when you mix it in to the grains and the cooler soaks up some heat, you stabilize around 152F which is a good 'catch all' sacchrification rest for many beer styles. the mash is usually around 1.2-1.4 quarts of water per pound of grain. usually nets you almost half your total boil volume. The sparge water is for rinsing the sugar off the grain as fully as possible. there is batch sparging, fly sparging, and hybrid methods, not to mention no sparge mashing, and double/triple batch sparges.

5. all grain has no bearing on keg vs. bottle. if you don't wanna keg, bottle it. it'll taste the same. some prefer bottled beer to keg'd beer.

It sounds like you misunderstand a few of the basic fundamentals of all grain brewing.

Here is a great place to start: "All Grain Primer"

Bobby_M has a very well written and easy to understand primer on all-grain brewing. It helped me tremendously when I first started with all-grain.

Also as malkore stated, approx. 13lbs can be used to make a ~6% beer.

Here is another great piece of info from Bobby_M: This is how big your mash tun needs to be

I'll answer your questions in order.

1) http://www.academy.com/index.php?pa...d_coolers&start=0&selectedSKU=0222-01260-3018 This should work great for your mashing needs. I have a 48 quart cooler similar to this one that I've been using for quite a while. You could either go with a stainless steel braid manifold or a copper manifold like I use. Here is a video that a member of the forum made:

Also, check this chart out that Bobby_M made https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/how-big-your-mash-tun-needs-123585/

2) Buy a cooler online and have it shipped to Canada.

3) If you don't want to do 10 gallon batches, you could either make another mashtun or do a partigyle brew. You can find stuff on that topic here, but if you plan on doing that, you would need to get a mash tun to accommodate that much grain.

4) Strike Water (Mash Water) is the water that you initially put into the mastun with the crushed grain. Since the crushed grain is going to cool the water temp down, It's typically ~10*F hotter than you want your mash temp to be for the hour. So, if you want to mash at 152*F, you would heat your strike water to around 162-164*F. It's common for a lot of homebrewers to use the formula of 1.25 qts of water/lb of grain regarding their strike water.

After you mash your grain for the hour or so, vorlauf (recirculate), and drain those first runnings, there is going to be quite a bit of sugar left behind in that grain bed. So to rinse it all out, a lot of us batch sparge. In order to do this, you will measure your first runnings amount and sparge with that much water. So lets say your first runnings were 3 gallons and you want your pre-boil amount of wort to be 6.5 gallons. You would sparge with 3.5 gallons of water at around 165 degrees. You would just dump that water into your tun, stir, let settle, vorlauf, drain, and start your boil.

I know that's kinda a lot to take in, so if you have any more questions, let me know.

J

Yeah I was asking because a lot of people said that they believed having too large of a mash tun was ruining their efficiency and temps. So I thought the 36 quart would be the perfect size hehe...

I've seen that guys video and will be making one very similar. I was thinking of just making 2 mash tuns. I actually currently have enough bottles to do four 5 gallon batches (I'm currently a Cooper's extract brewer.. which.. well isn't really brewing hehe)

I already have a 42quart 'lobster boiler' thing from Wal-Mart. They have one left so I can buy another for a total of 2. The others are all 30quart. They call those 'turkey fryers'.

So I can have 2 mash tuns, 2 42quart kettles. Will that help me brew two batches at once? What do you think?

TheCookieMonster said:

So I can have 2 mash tuns, 2 42quart kettles. Will that help me brew two batches at once? What do you think?

Click to expand...

I'm trying to figure out why exactly you have to brew two different batches on the same day ALWAYS!? You said that you would be brewing like this every three months or so. Can't you find two days out of 90 to brew? I just think this is not only a waste of money, but would be more of a headache to deal with initially and on brew days. I've never brewed two batches at the same time, but I know when I first started brewing AG, I had trouble brewing 1 at a time. I think I can speak not only for myself, but for many others, the more brew days, the better!

If I were you, I would stick with one cooler, a hot liquor tank, a boil kettle, one propane burner, and just brew 5 or 10 gallons (of the same recipe) at a time. I can tell you that set-up like so many of us AG brewers have, is simple, but oh so effective.

J

looks like the questions got answered.

I think you should plan on 10g batches then anything will fit.

Do a 10g batch then you can slit the batch and essentially make two beers by adding something to one or use different yeasts.

What do you mean slit the batch? I want to do something like make an American Cream Ale and an American Red Ale. At once.

American Chocolate Coffee Rasberry Stout.

I actually have enough bottles to do FOUR 5 gallon batches. So I actually wanted to do two at once, and then 2 right after that. I like to spend all my time in one place whenever I can. When I BBQ I go for 10 hours make everything under the sun. It lasts in the freezer about 3 months.

So it would be nice to have some veriety when brewing and have lots of different choices that's why I wanted to do it all at once. No one else here does that?

there are many people here that do that, just not the way you are going to do it.

I've done back to back batches one time. It's a lot of work and I find it more interesting when one batch is ready to drink at a time. There's nothing wrong with what you're looking to do.

You can stagger your double batches by about 60 minutes if you have two kettles and two burners.

Batch #1
1, heat strike water in one of the kettles.
1 mix strike and mash in cooler.
heat sparge water for batch 1 and strike water for batch 2 in smaller kettle.
1 drain mash into big kettle.
1 dump sparge into mash, stir, drain into larger kettle.
start batch one boiling.
clean mash tun.

2 mix strike and grain for batch 2
2 heat sparge water in smaller kettle
finish up boil on batch one, chill, clean larger kettle.
2 drain mash
2 add sparge, stir, drain.
2 boil

Well said Bobby. I think that you're going to find that brewing a couple of times every 2 or 3 months is not that big of a deal. In fact, I bet you will enjoy those brew days.

J

I don't know.. I am itching to brew another batch and have two under my belt this week already!!! I will probably brew again Sunday and then again some day next week....I am obsessed!!! lol

Bobby_M said:

I've done back to back batches one time. It's a lot of work and I find it more interesting when one batch is ready to drink at a time. There's nothing wrong with what you're looking to do.

You can stagger your double batches by about 60 minutes if you have two kettles and two burners.

Batch #1
1, heat strike water in one of the kettles.
1 mix strike and mash in cooler.
heat sparge water for batch 1 and strike water for batch 2 in smaller kettle.
1 drain mash into big kettle.
1 dump sparge into mash, stir, drain into larger kettle.
start batch one boiling.
clean mash tun.

2 mix strike and grain for batch 2
2 heat sparge water in smaller kettle
finish up boil on batch one, chill, clean larger kettle.
2 drain mash
2 add sparge, stir, drain.
2 boil

Click to expand...

Thanks for the help. I'm going to go out today and get another kettle and burner. I dont like the labor involved of brewing beer personally. If I had the hoses and pumps then that would be another story hehe..

OHIOSTEVE said:

I don't know.. I am itching to brew another batch and have two under my belt this week already!!! I will probably brew again Sunday and then again some day next week....I am obsessed!!! lol

Click to expand...

I find brewing beer stressful and physically labor instensive so I like to put all my eggs in 1 basket and do large batches. Same with BBQ'ing. I dislike the actual labor involved in the sanitation and brewing. I like the planning of the recipes and the taste testing and learning from my mistakes. But not the actual brewing part and I especially hate cleaning and sanitization.

When I saw the video on what was involved for cleaning a keg, I was like NO THANKS! Heheh..

TheCookieMonster said:

I find brewing beer stressful and physically labor instensive so I like to put all my eggs in 1 basket and do large batches. Same with BBQ'ing. I dislike the actual labor involved in the sanitation and brewing. I like the planning of the recipes and the taste testing and learning from my mistakes. But not the actual brewing part and I especially hate cleaning and sanitization.

When I saw the video on what was involved for cleaning a keg, I was like NO THANKS! Heheh..

Click to expand...

If you're going to buy all of that stuff, why not make a brewstand?

TheCookieMonster said:

I find brewing beer stressful and physically labor instensive so I like to put all my eggs in 1 basket and do large batches. Same with BBQ'ing. I dislike the actual labor involved in the sanitation and brewing. I like the planning of the recipes and the taste testing and learning from my mistakes. But not the actual brewing part and I especially hate cleaning and sanitization.

When I saw the video on what was involved for cleaning a keg, I was like NO THANKS! Heheh..

Click to expand...

I can relate a bit to you here, in the fact you find it stressful and labour intensive. You will notice that as you get better at AG brewing, and your process becomes 2nd nature, the stress just goes away. And as for labour? That seems like nothing after while also... I have been AG brewing for only 3 months and its already pretty stinkin easy. In fact, I get tons of things done around the house between processes (IE boiling, mashing, sparging, etc).

Sanitising also gets easier. All I do is throw everything in a WIDE and deep container with some sanitiser (idophor is my choice)m and use some designated rubber gloves to slosh around. Then, I leave it all there while I mash / boil. Hardly any work. Sanitizing bottles? Sheesh... vinator with some sulfite water, and a tap rinser. I vinate 30 mins before racking, to soak it a bit. Then I rinse AS I bottle, its so simple once you get a few batches under your belt.

Hope you find that encouraging!

TheCookieMonster said:

I find brewing beer stressful and physically labor instensive so I like to put all my eggs in 1 basket and do large batches. Same with BBQ'ing. I dislike the actual labor involved in the sanitation and brewing. I like the planning of the recipes and the taste testing and learning from my mistakes. But not the actual brewing part and I especially hate cleaning and sanitization.

When I saw the video on what was involved for cleaning a keg, I was like NO THANKS! Heheh..

Click to expand...

The only thing I detest about the process is the clean-up, it takes me forever!

Once I get it all together, a clean-in-place system will be my goal!