How much grain can be mashed in a 10 gallon cooler?

How much grain can I cram into a 10 gallon rubbermaid cooler? I want to start making 10 gallon batches. I have the space in my kettle and I have enough ferentors, I'm not sure about the MLT, though.

I have a 10 gallon round Igloo cooler with a false bottom. I max out at between 23-24 pounds of grain, right to the tippy top.

Go here, scroll down to the third calculator entitled, can I mash it? And imput data as necessary.

burninmules said:

How much grain can I cram into a 10 gallon rubbermaid cooler? I want to start making 10 gallon batches. I have the space in my kettle and I have enough ferentors, I'm not sure about the MLT, though.

Click to expand...

This helped me out.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/how-big-your-mash-tun-needs-123585/

burninmules said:

How much grain can I cram into a 10 gallon rubbermaid cooler? I want to start making 10 gallon batches. I have the space in my kettle and I have enough ferentors, I'm not sure about the MLT, though.

Click to expand...

You'll easily be able to make 10 gallon batches in a 10 gallon rubbermaid cooler. They won't be 1.100 OG batches but I've got the same setup and I too use the Green Bay Rackers calculator that Revvy linked.

Last month, I did my first 15 gallon batch out of it. I did a parti-gyle with 5 gallons of 1.063 OG IPA and 10 gallons of 1.041 Pale Ale...I did have to add some fermentables to the boil (honey) to boost SG but 15 gallons out of 25 lbs of grains was pretty cost effective...and fun!

Awesome! Thank you so much for the quick responses. You guys are the best.
I am in the middle of a boil as we speak. Cheers!

Revvy said:

Go here, scroll down to the third calculator entitled, can I mash it? And imput data as necessary.

Click to expand...

That little site is great! Sure wish I had that earlier today when I was trying to get my mash temp up...

it did a russian imperial stout that had 23 pounds of grain in a 5 gallon batch. This was at the very top of the cooler. Due do the amount of water to mash, i didnt have enough water to do a double batch sparge. I normally get about 80% efficiency and with this beer i ended up with about 65% efficiency. Next time ill substitute some DME for the 2 row and not have such a full mash tun.

I recently did my first 12 gallon batch. I have a 12 gallons MLT, and was able to mash 26 pounds of grain, with 8 gallons of water. It was bursting at the brim!

Glad this was asked. Getting into grain brewing and was wondering if I could actually get at least a 1.1 OG out of a 10 gallon mash tun. Looks like the answer is NO. By my calculation it would appear that there is a potential of only getting about 1.07 at best. Ofcourse there again I am new to doing my brewing with all grain. So in order to get my Barley Wine project just right I will still have to use some DME to finish it off. And here I was hoping to go ALL grain.

Also, you can mash thicker and sparge more to get where you need to be.

If doing partial mash would the same #s apply? Currently I just do extract with steeping specialty grains but wanted to move up to PM. I got a 5 gallon cooler from Home Depot on the cheap last fall and want to add the weldless bulkhead to it.

WRBBB said:

Glad this was asked. Getting into grain brewing and was wondering if I could actually get at least a 1.1 OG out of a 10 gallon mash tun. Looks like the answer is NO. By my calculation it would appear that there is a potential of only getting about 1.07 at best. Ofcourse there again I am new to doing my brewing with all grain. So in order to get my Barley Wine project just right I will still have to use some DME to finish it off. And here I was hoping to go ALL grain.

Click to expand...

1.1 is a heck of a # to hit.

I have an imperial pilsner that was AG in my 10g MLT that came out to be 1.086 with 21.5lbs.

Also using 100% fermentables such as honey, sugar, ect... does not mean you are not going AG. Its just a simple easy way to raise SG.