Am I over thinking the HLT?

Ok, 10g cooler mash tun built, 15g keggle built. Need a HLT. I am sticking with 5g batches for the foreseeable future. Can I just use a 5g cooler for my HLT, or is a 10g mandatory? I typically brew beers around the 1.050-1.065 range.

Or can I forego the HLT completely and just use my old 5g kettle and heat the sparge water? I plan on batch sparging.

I'm sure I'm over complicating things, but I just don't want to screw my first AG brewday. Thanks!

The old 5g kettle will be fine or the other option is to use your boil kettle to heat water and temporarily collect your first runnings into a bucket.

Any update on those tracking #s Bobby?

Bobby_M said:

The old 5g kettle will be fine or the other option is to use your boil kettle to heat water and temporarily collect your first runnings into a bucket.

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Well put. I use a 4 gallon kettle plus a tea kettle to heat up sparge water.

The only reason I can see to use a cooler for an HLT is if your using electric to heat the water or fly sparging. Otherwise, any large pot will do just fine. Don't over think it, for batch sparging the HLT is just a vessel to heat your strike and sparging water.

Hammy71 said:

The only reason I can see to use a cooler for an HLT is if your using electric to heat the water or fly sparging. Otherwise, any large pot will do just fine. Don't over think it, for batch sparging the HLT is just a vessel to heat your strike and sparging water.

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Yup, I just use my old 7gal brew kettle to heat up strike and sparge water.