10 gal coolers for 5 gallon batches?

[Thehopguy]

Is this a good idea? I read that a 10 gal is good for big beers and I do plan on making strong IIPA's and strong belgians. So should I get 10 gallon coolers and skip the 5's??

 

[Jud]

This should answer your question.


www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

 

[brewmcq]

Yes.

 

[_JP_]

I'm happy with my 5, but you can do everything in a 10-gal that you can with a 5-gal.

 

[Revvy]

I've been using my 5 gallon for probably 5 years and haven't really seen the need to upgrade. You can hold 14 pounds of grain in them, that's pretty on par with the grainbills of 99% of my beers. On the rare times I've done something bigger, I've usually just used a brew buddie's larger cooler. But that's really a rarity.

If you're brewing average grav ales with 10-12 pounds of grain, then you really don't need anything more than a 5 gallon cooler.

In fact one would argue you'd get more loss of temp during mashing if you're using a smaller grain bill in a larger cooler with a bigger airmass above the grainbed.

 

[wilserbrewer]

You can use a rectangular cooler as well for batch sparging. 28qt is a handy dandy size IME for five gallon batches. Cheap too!

http://www.google.com/products/cata...JqkRTsCaM4aRgQffoeTrDQ&sqi=2&ved=0CFUQ8wIwAA#

 

[brewjester]

I have a 54 qt rectangle cooler with a SS hosebraid. Ive done 10 gallons of Dopplebock in it. I won gold doing batch sparge. I would go with at least a 12-14 gallon pot too. It's easier to do less but not when u wanna brew IIPA's and Belgian anything. Just a thought.

 

[chrislehr]

Yep. The 5g would only be good for session beers.

I have the next problem up, I can't do big beers in my 10g mastun.

 

[brewjester]

@chrislehr. I made a Dopplebock and I used 4# of pilsner DME and won a gold medal. I parti-gyled the beer and made an Alt with the second runnings. A cheap up grade for ur system is a 54 qt cooler from home depot was $15, a SS hose braid $7 and some tubing. Look for Denny Conn's batch sparging online. That will help with converting ur cooler over to mash/lauter tun. Hope this helps.

 

[TomOliver]

I went ahead and got a 10 gallon cooler from home depot because even though I've only been doing 5 gallon batches, I like to make bigger beers sometimes. Next weekend, I'm doing a RIS that calls for a 21lb grain bill and I'll definitely be happy to have the extra room.

And on the other issue being extra headroom: I brewed a cream ale this weekend (9.5lb grain bill) and mashed at 149 for 90 min and didn't lose a single degree in the whole time. Of course, I heat my tun pretty hot to start with but I haven't had any trouble with dropping temp because of extra head room.

Best of luck,

Tom

 

[Brian-d]

I just purchased a 10 gallon rubbermaid all grain system. It appears the real challenge using a cooler for a mash tun is mashing out. I just ran a recipe on beersmith and to raise my initial strike from 151 to mash out of 168 it would take 16 quarts of near boiling water. This severely limits the grain bill I can use for my beer. How important is it to mash out? So many recipes call for it and again the disadvantage with a cooler mash tun is you have to add water to bring the temp up. I'd like to hear opinions on mashing out from other all grain brewers using coolers. Thanks and happy 4th to all!

 

[944play]

How important is it to mash out? So many recipes call for it and again the disadvantage with a cooler mash tun is you have to add water to bring the temp up.

It's probably not important at all, but if you are lacking room for an infusion, consider a decoction.

 

[Mysticmead]

you can always do a decoction to mash out.. no extra water needed that way.

 

[Brian-d]

ahhhh...why didn't I think of that. Do either of you mash out or just start the runoff after mashing?

 

[Golddiggie]

BeerSmith 2.0 will also tell you how much room you'll need to do the mash-in, and mash-out for your recipe. I just make sure I keep it under ~9 gallons for my 10 gallon RubberMaid mash tun. If I need more space than that, I can switch over to my 70qt Coleman Xtreme cooler mash tun...

IMO, you won't regret having a larger mash tun. Unless you're fortunate to have buddies that will let you use their larger mash tuns, when you're going to mash more than ~14# of grain. For me, a 5 gallon cooler/mash tun just didn't make sense... Especially since my low OG batches have 12-13# of grain, my 'normal' batches range 14-18# of grain, with 'big' brews going up to about 28-30# (5-6 gallons into fermenter) of grain.

I have started to do the mash-out with the past few batches. I'm getting good results from this method. The real test will be once I start drinking those brews. So far, they're either still in fermenter, or chilling down before being opened.