Mash Tun Too Small... What Would You Do?

[huge1s]

I am planning on brewing the DFH 90 Minute IPA clone and ran some calculations on the rackers site to see if I can fit all the grain (18.16 lb) in my mash tun. I have a 28 quart coleman cooler and the rackers calculation said I need 7.13 gallons to make this beer. I am pondering my options and wanted to see what you guys would do.

1) Reduce base grain (pilsner) by a pound (requires 6.74 gallon mash tun... still pretty close) and use some Light DME to make up for the difference in gravity.
- I was going to try the step mash on this (2 steps not including mash out) and would be worried that it is still too close to full if I have to add more boiling water than expected
- I could also reduce the grain bill by 2 pounds to give me some safety room

2) Use another smaller cooler (not mash tun) to mash a few pounds of grain at the same time as my mash tun is mashing.
- I guess I would have to siphon instead of drain out of this smaller cooler (basically a beverage cooler).

3) Reduce the mash thickness from 1.25/lb to whatever it takes to fit it all in (hopefully not less than 1/lb)

I am not going to build a new mash tun at this point (maybe in the future if I like brewing bigger beers)... so what would you do? Any other option I haven't thought of?

 

[jester5120]

how much specialty grain are you using. that shouldn't need mashed, just steeped so you could do that in a seperate pot. also your idea with swapping some of the grain out for dme is a good option

 

[foltster]

I am pondering my options and wanted to see what you guys would do.

3) Reduce the mash thickness from 1.25/lb to whatever it takes to fit it all in (hopefully not less than 1/lb)

I routinely mash around 1qt/LB in order to obtain 10 gallons of higher gravity beer from a 10 gallon MLT. Mashing in without doughballs requires a bunch of stirring but the beers seems to turn out great.

I usually end up doing 3 sparges due to grain absorption.

 

[wilserbrewer]

Per the rackers calculator, 18lbs of grain at 1 qt / lb is 6 gal. or 24 qts
Repeat sparges until you have your volume required.

 

[huge1s]

how much specialty grain are you using. that shouldn't need mashed, just steeped so you could do that in a seperate pot. also your idea with swapping some of the grain out for dme is a good option

I don't know if this counts as a specialty grain... but there is 1.66 pounds of amber malt, which, to my understanding is just basically toasted 2 row. 16.5 pounds of pilsner.

Sounds like i could go down to 1/lb without too much effect then.

 

[Yankeehillbrewer]

Maybe just scale it down to a 4 gallon batch?

 

[foltster]

I don't know if this counts as a specialty grain... but there is 1.66 pounds of amber malt, which, to my understanding is just basically toasted 2 row. 16.5 pounds of pilsner.

Sounds like i could go down to 1/lb without too much effect then.

This is what I would do...

 

[huge1s]

I took another look at the recipe and it was calculated for 65% efficiency... My system gets around 75%.... that should buy me some room as well. I think I will just go with a lower ratio and have a pound of dme around if i need to make any minor adjustments.

 

[BrewMU]

You could mash in your boil pot and collect wort in your mash tun.

 

[Yankeehillbrewer]

I took another look at the recipe and it was calculated for 65% efficiency... My system gets around 75%.... that should buy me some room as well. I think I will just go with a lower ratio and have a pound of dme around if i need to make any minor adjustments.

You may want to plan for a lower efficiency with a big grain bill. I know I usually get about 10% less with big grain bills. So your 65% may be pretty good.

 

[huge1s]

I decided to go with the full grain bill and mash at 1.1/lb. That gives me an extra half gallon of head space. Assuming the weather holds up, brew day will be Sunday. This recipe (DFH 90 Minute IPA clone) calls for a step Mash with a rest at 122, then up to 149. Am I going to run into trouble if my first step leaves a ratio of .7/lb? I am also worried about getting up to 149 with the amount of boiling water it calls for, partly because my water boils at 200 degrees and I am pretty sure those mash calculators use 212 for the boiling point of water. What would I lose if I just did a single infusion at 149? Or what is the minimum ratio you can go with at doe in? I think I can do the step mash, but there is very little room for error.

 

[huge1s]

Wow... that was a close one this weekend. Mash tun for the step mash was too small and had to improvise. First step @122 went fine but could not get the second step up to 149 with the boiling water.

Got the idea to pull some of the mash out and dump it in a small cooler I had. Still couldn't get to 149 with more boiling water. Improvised by draining the mash tun into the boil kettle and heating it up to 155, which cooled to exactly 149 by the time we put it back in the mash tun, but we had too much volume after removing some of the mash and adding boiling water so I ended up dumping the extra into that small cooler and mashing both for 60 minutes. After we got done mashing... I dumped the contents of the small cooler into the big one and sparged. Somehow I ended up hitting 65% efficiency (I normally get 75% but this was a big grain bill and expected a 10% hit). I overshot my volume and ended up with a couple gallons of wasted wort, but had 7 gallons into the boil kettle (recipe called for 6.75 gallons). Added a 1/4 pound of DME to bring the gravity up a couple points because I had a little too much pre-boil volume. Somehow everything turned out ok and it is happily farting away in my office! Nothing like a little improvisation.

 

[bschot]

I know I'm a little late but I would have just done a single infusion at 149, my clone recipe calls for single infusion. I only step mash on wheat or adjunct heavy beers. And then I would have done a decoction mash out, which is pull some of the wort off of the mash (exactly how much can be calculated by hand or with software, I usually add about a half gallon to a gallon to the number given by software, I don't think it calculates thin mash) bring it to a boil and then add it back to the mash. I have some big beers I want to brew but would be otherwise unable to brew, due to mash tun size, if it weren't for the decoction mash out. Or you could simply skip the mash out, but I skipped the mash out on a pumpkin beer and I think it lost some body where my previous batch of pumpkin beer (mashed out) had the body.

Side note: I'm from the church of decoction mashing, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I brew a decocted hefeweizen and think it's the best thing around.

 

[huge1s]

Well... Then I think it is safe to blame you for the chaos on Sunday. I just decided to follow the recipe as close as I could. I would be interested in decoction for a hefe (that is my staple beer). I think this beer will turn out ok but I definitely had some doubts as my mash tun was about to overflow...