10 Gallon Cooler Mash Tun Too Big for 1 Gallon Batches?

[nyrmc23]

I found a 10-gallon Cooler Mash Tun on Craigslist with a false bottom and ball valve for a great price. I almost exclusively brew 1 gallon batches (I'm still finding my groove and don't want to risk larger batches coming out bad) so I'm unsure if that size of a cooler is too much for 1 gallon BIAB. Any thoughts?

 

[Sammy86]

I found a 10-gallon Cooler Mash Tun on Craigslist with a false bottom and ball valve for a great price. I almost exclusively brew 1 gallon batches (I'm still finding my groove and don't want to risk larger batches coming out bad) so I'm unsure if that size of a cooler is too much for 1 gallon BIAB. Any thoughts?

If you're doing 1.060 and above gravity beers I would say you're probably ok...smaller grain bills it might be over kill and difficult to keep the tun at temp with so much space.

 

[tracer bullet]

Agreed, it'll be tough. I have a 7 and 14 gallon cooler mash tun both, and I put "smaller" beers in the 7, "bigger" in the 14. I've found if smaller beers go in the bigger tun the mash does indeed cool more quickly - somewhere around 5 or 6 degrees instead of 2 or 3. Big beers obviously have to go in the big one just to fit, and seem to hold much better. I am thinking it's a simple surface area thing, a bigger vessel to radiate heat.

But - a few thoughts... a big cooler tun is a decent way to store stuff. When I'm done with it I throw my whisk, pitchers, immersion chiller, all sorts of things in it. Keeps them clean and the garage tidy. And if you have ever considered a sous vide heater or anything like that for your mashing, then it could make up for the faster loss of heat. But, then again with sous vide you could just use a metal pot.

In the end I think if you've been wanting a mash tun, go for it. If you're just browsing and saw it and wondered - probably means you don't need it.

 

[cubalz]

You could use it but it is not optimal. I would suggest pre warming the mash tun with hot water prior to mashing in. Honestly most of the conversion happens in the first 15-20 minutes so technically it is doable.

 

[jdauria]

I think you will lose a lot of heat when mashing due to the amount of headspace in the cooler unless you add some kind of lid inside the cooler right on top of the mash to hold the heat in. If you are doing 1 gallon BIAB, why not just mash in your boil kettle? That's what most BIAB people, myself included, do.

 

[nyrmc23]

Thanks for all the replies. Yeah I was thinking the same thing but wanted more expert opinions. I may just buy it (he's asking $40) in the event I do go up to 3 or 5 gallon batches in the future. Right now I use my kettle and it works.

 

[DVCNick]

Besides the heat retention...
My 10gal cooler with false bottom has a measured deadspace of 2.5 qt. There isn't really a good way to recover that. If you are going for a 1 gallon batch and have over half a gallon of mashtun deadspace, your extract efficiency is going to be horrible.

You could overcome this by removing the false bottom and BIAB, but, as mentioned I'd find a smaller vessel for that due to heat retention.

That said, putting together a cooler mashtun is surprisingly expensive... if the thing is in good shape, for $40 I'd buy it if I thought there was any chance I'd be doing bigger batches in the future.

 

[tracer bullet]

The retention is a really good point, as is pre-warming. I use a cooler but do a couple things to mitigate the issues:

1) I have a bucket heater plugged into a temp controller and timer so it preheats starting around 5AM so it's ready to go when I wake up - I head into the garage and start the mash, then back to the house for coffee, getting my daughter up, etc.
2) It has a false bottom but I use a bag as well, gets me a little better efficiency when I lift the bag and a little extra wort comes out, plus it's a ncie backup if the mash sticks (though I always use rice hulls and haven't had one stick in a long time)
3) Because I use the bag and can remove it, any wort left in the bottom that doesn't make it out the valve gets physically picked up and dumped into the boil kettle. By then it's not heavy and - well, why not, free beer!