What cooler to use for 10 gallon batches?

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RayInUT

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I'm going to do my first ten gallon batch today (maybe) with a 20.5 lb. grain bill and just realized that my MLT might not be big enough. I just filled it with 10 gallons of water and found that I have little space for grain. It's a 50 quart Ice Cube cooler. I have another 50 quart cooler that I could use to do half the batch but it isn't set up as an MLT. Should I just do half the batch in that and then dump that into my MLT to sparge once the grains in that cooler have sparged? How much room will I need in the Ice Cube for grain? What size do you guys use for ten gallon batches?

Thanks,

Ray
 
If you mash with 1.25 qt/lb of grain you should be able to fit it in there. You shouldn't be mashing with 10 gallons of water. It would be about 6.5 gallons of water which will leave you room for the grain. And then sparge with the rest of your water to get to your boil volume.
 
If you mash with 1.25 qt/lb of grain you should be able to fit it in there. You shouldn't be mashing with 10 gallons of water. It would be about 6.5 gallons of water which will leave you room for the grain. And then sparge with the rest of your water to get to your boil volume.

I've been looking at trying a ten gallon batch and had a similar question, although I only have the 10 gallon Igloo setup. How many quarts does 1 pound of grain mixed with 1.25 quarts of water take up?
 
I'm going to do my first ten gallon batch today (maybe) with a 20.5 lb. grain bill and just realized that my MLT might not be big enough. I just filled it with 10 gallons of water and found that I have little space for grain. It's a 50 quart Ice Cube cooler. I have another 50 quart cooler that I could use to do half the batch but it isn't set up as an MLT. Should I just do half the batch in that and then dump that into my MLT to sparge once the grains in that cooler have sparged? How much room will I need in the Ice Cube for grain? What size do you guys use for ten gallon batches?

Thanks,

Ray

You should be able to fit 25# of grain using 1.25 quarts of water per pound of graain, it will be FULL though, so with your grain bill of 20.5# y ou should dough in with 25.6 quarts of water, it will hold that just fine, good luck:mug:
 
If you mash with 1.25 qt/lb of grain you should be able to fit it in there. You shouldn't be mashing with 10 gallons of water. It would be about 6.5 gallons of water which will leave you room for the grain. And then sparge with the rest of your water to get to your boil volume.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I'm doing a low sacc rest (146) as I want this to be extremely fermentable. It's a Duvel cloneish recipe but I'm using Unibroue La Fin du Monde yeast I cultured and I want to get a 90%+ attenuation so I was thinking I needed to have a thinner mash but it probably doesn't matter if I am batch sparging. I guess if I am low on my OG I can just add some more dextrose which will ferment about 100% anyway. I'm already using four pounds of dextrose in the boil with 20.5 lbs. of DWC pilsner malt. I've been reading "Brew Like a Monk" and I think I'm going to nail this sucker! I need to finish below 1.008ish.
 
Oh man, I overshot my gravity. I came out at 1.073 for my og. 17.8 brix! I have a two quart starter of Unibroue La Fin du Monde cultured yeast. Will this be enough? I guess I could add water to bring down the gravity a little. Why would I want to do that though? Ideas?
 
If you have a stir plate that should be plenty for a 1073. I had about 1.25 quarts in my starter for a 1081 brew that induced a blowoff less than 24 hours later.
I guess the starter was okay. I had bubbling from both buckets within three hours. Now I have to ramp up the temperature from a starting fermentation temperature of 61* to about 80*. I have a "radiator" style space heater with a digital thermostat that I think I will put in a closet with the fermentors. Duvel does there primary fermentation over a period of five days with +90% attenuation. I'm shooting for the same thing. I am going to be in the market for a bigger cooler. With a 1.25 qt. to pound ratio, I barely had enough room in the cooler for this 10 gallon batch. I need a better burner too. The bayou burner was barely adequate.
 
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