10 gallon round gott cooler with false bottom

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discgolfin

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OK..After maybe 10 batches or so..I have noticed the plastic of my round cooler begin to warp and expand in several places. The botom being the main problem. It has explanded up and this basically makes my SS false bottom get a stuck mash all the time. I usually preheat the cooler with 175 to 185 degree water and think that this high temp casue this to happen..Anyone else have this problem? This has esentially made the false bottom worthless and makes me want to go into a square cooler with a copper braid for the future......

Jay
 
I don't use a false bottom, like you said I use the Square 48qt cooler with the steel braid and have no problems, I would go this way if you are having trouble.
 
I have the round ten gallon and have used 170 degree water for pre-heating for many batches, but have not had any problems. It may be on the horizon I guess.
 
it took 10 batches for your cooler to warp? lucky! my gott 10g warped on day 1, but on the side, so it doesn't affect the false bottom. it does affect my ability to remove the false bottom. if this was my cooler, id remove the false bottom and get in there with a blow torch and very carefully heat the plastic until i could smush (that's a technical term) the plastic down with something smooth. if you keep the torch moving you can heat it until it's very malleable without scorching it.

ps- ever play the fox valley park district frolf course in aurora? i grew up bike riding distance from there (used to fish in the lake) but they weren't done with the course until after i had moved. what a great course!
 
I have use my round cooler once.. so I am not and expert on this but why are you preheating you cooler so high (Temp) I used beer Smith and you can enter your cooler temp and it will adjust the strike temp for you so that even with the heat lost to warm your cooler up, the mash strike temp will be right on!

I just brewer in 30 degree weather with a slight wind and i still acheived a 71% effic.

Sorry.. in short.... there is no need to get the plastic that hot.

please correct me if I am wrong! no hard feelings but the mash temp even when using different mash temp rest you should never get that high of a temp.
 
Fire_travels said:
I have use my round cooler once.. so I am not and expert on this but why are you preheating you cooler so high (Temp) I used beer Smith and you can enter your cooler temp and it will adjust the strike temp for you so that even with the heat lost to warm your cooler up, the mash strike temp will be right on!

I just brewer in 30 degree weather with a slight wind and i still acheived a 71% effic.

Sorry.. in short.... there is no need to get the plastic that hot.

please correct me if I am wrong! no hard feelings but the mash temp even when using different mash temp rest you should never get that high of a temp.

i think you are wrong. even with a thermal mass of 0 for your cooler, you still need to mash in with water in the 170-175 range to hit your temp. 10 degrees over that to pre-heat your cooler is very conservative.
 
I have a plastic false bottom similar to your ss one. The first time I went all grain, I had a stuck sparge. Since then, I wrapped a grain cloth (cheese cloth) around the false bottom and never have had stuck sparges since then. Also, my runnings are perfectly clear.
 
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