5 gallon mash in 10 gallon rubbermaid?

I am collecting the parts to make my HLT and MLT. I had all intentions on doing a 5 gallon setup, because the coolers are cheap(&30) and easily available to me.

Today I found a 10 gallon rubbermaid cooler for free, missing the lid, I figure I can cut down rigid styrofoam or something to make a lid.

If I were to buy another 10 gallon rubbermaid around $80 canadian dollars, could I do 5 gallon mashes in it without too much heat loss? would there be enough of a grain bed?

Or should I just buy a 5 gallon for the MLT and use the lidless 10 gallon for a HLT?

I do plan on doing mostly 5 gallon batches, but it would be nice to have the option of a 10 gallon when I want to.

Thanks guys

FWIW, I don't think you can put much more than 12.5 lbs of grain, at a 1.25 qt/lb ratio, in a 5 gallon cooler; perfectly fine for many styles of beer. Why not use the 5 gallon for an HLT and mash in the 10 gallon cooler? I don't believe you would use more than five gallons of sparge water anyhow. You could save yourself some coin. Other more seasoned folks will chime in with info.

Pete08 said:

FWIW, I don't think you can put much more than 12.5 lbs of grain, at a 1.25 qt/lb ratio, in a 5 gallon cooler; perfectly fine for many styles of beer. Why not use the 5 gallon for an HLT and mash in the 10 gallon cooler? I don't believe you would use more than five gallons of sparge water anyhow. You could save yourself some coin. Other more seasoned folks will chime in with info.

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I've squeezed 14 pounds of grain into a 5 gallon with a bit of difficulty, but still pulled it off.

When some people are doing smaller grain bills with larger coolers they often make a "Floater" insulator out of a piece of 1" styrofoam...Some actually sandwhich it with shiny insulated blanket material or just wrap it in tinfoil. And they set it to float on top of the water/grainbed...that helps keep the heat in even though there is a larger airspace above it.

SO if you have a free 10 gallon, make a lid, make a floater for smaller batches, and do like pete said, use the 5 gal for your water.

I did my first All Grain batch 2 weeks ago with a new 10 gallon cooler. It was around 12 lbs of grain. What I did was pre-heat the cooler with 120 deg tap water for ~15 min. Once it was heat soaked it held temp just fine with just the top on. Worked just great.

Yeap, 10 gallons coolers are great for 5 gallon batches... your mash volume will be 3.5-4 gallons anyway, perfect fit.

Have you bought your fittings yet? If not, or if so, Id highly recommend 1/2" instead of 3/8". You will have a much easier time getting fluids to move, the flow rates are a lot faster FWIW

I have both 5 and 10g Rubbermaid coolers.
They both work equally well for mashing, and I don't lose any more heat in the 10g cooler than I do in the 5g.
The big difference is in the sparge. It is much easier to batch sparge with the 10g unless I am using a grain bill of less than 10#, but I get much better efficiency with the 5g when fly sparging. I suspect that this is partially because I get channeling with the fly sparge due to the reduced grain bed depth. I haven't yet tried fly sparging with a grain bill > 13#, but I suspect that this would increase my efficiency.

-a.

I just bought a 10 gallon cooler, as my efficiency was suffering anytime I used more than 11 lbs of grain in my 5 gallon MLT. I was going to simply swap the hardware from the 5 to the 10, but now I'm thinking I'll just buy new and keep the old MLT in operation for smaller beers. Furthermore, should I want to make 10 gallons of a really big beer, I could divide the mash up between the two.