Quick Question About 10 Gallon Brewing

I am going to be making my first 10 gallon batch this weekend. I will be making BierMuncher's Centennial Blonde. I will be mashing in a 10 gallon home depot water cooler. I was also wanting to try upping my mash thickness to 1.5 qt/lb to see if it will grab a few extra efficiency points after reading a few success stories on here. When I do this or even when I just do the standard 1.25qt/lb, BeerSmith is telling me it is going to be too large for my cooler with the mash in and mash out volumes (I have it set for a single infusion mash). My question is, should I just drain a little out of my mash tun before mashing out, or should i just batch sparge or not use a mash out options. Has anyone done a 10 gallon recipe on this with the mash out and had no problem with it holding the entire amount?

Thanks for the help.

It soulds like you are going to be a maximum capacity with your mash in that cooler, so trying to do a mash out may be beyond your means. If you batch, I would say drain your cooler completely and sparge a little warmer. If you drain some and do an infusion to bring it to mash out temperatures, you will have to adjust your volume slightly because you are decreasing your thermal mass before your infusion. But hey, RDWHAHB whatever you decide to do I am sure it will work out somehow

I skipped mash out, and just sparged at 169*

B

You can pull a decoction to get your mash up to mash out temp. Because you'll be pulling from a fully converted mash you won't even have to do a rest. Plug the temp increase into beersmith as a decoction and it will tell you the correct volume to pull in order to achieve mash out temp. Make sure you recirculate your first runnings just like you would for a sparge. This will save almost 2 gallons of space in your cooler. Happy brewing!

Thanks for the help guys. Much appreciated.