andy6026
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- Jan 16, 2013
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I'm having a lot of trouble with these calculators and formulas for necessary mash tun sizes that I'm seeing online, partly because they're not directly answering the specific question I have, and partly because it seems that my real life experience contradicts what they are saying. Perhaps someone can help me out.
Here's my situation:
I need to figure out how big of a mash tun I need to comfortably batch sparge (doing a single sparge rather than multiple sparges) 10 gallon batches. Theoretically I'm probably going to be mashing batches that have grain bills of up to 24 lbs.
Here's the difficulties I've been having:
1) The online 'can I mash it' calculators seem to be only concerned with the size of the grain bill and the strike water. However, even if the water bill is split in half, the sparge takes up a lot more room because the grains are already saturated.
3) The claim I've read that 1 lb of saturated grain takes up 0.33 quarts of space in a mashtun doesn't seem to fit my real world experience. If it did I'd be able to sparge 20+ lbs of grain in a 48 quart cooler-style mash tun. But I can't... I end up with leftover water once the cooler is full at the sparge stage, and then have to sparge twice. I've tried cramming as much of my water bill as possible into the 'strike water stage' in order to lessen the sparge volume, but I still end up with having to sparge twice.
Does anyone have the faintest idea on how to calculate, for real, how big of a mashtun I need? I have the choice between a 70 qrt and 100 qrt cooler to build a new tun and there's a HUGE price difference. Some math widardry would really help!
Here's my situation:
I need to figure out how big of a mash tun I need to comfortably batch sparge (doing a single sparge rather than multiple sparges) 10 gallon batches. Theoretically I'm probably going to be mashing batches that have grain bills of up to 24 lbs.
Here's the difficulties I've been having:
1) The online 'can I mash it' calculators seem to be only concerned with the size of the grain bill and the strike water. However, even if the water bill is split in half, the sparge takes up a lot more room because the grains are already saturated.
3) The claim I've read that 1 lb of saturated grain takes up 0.33 quarts of space in a mashtun doesn't seem to fit my real world experience. If it did I'd be able to sparge 20+ lbs of grain in a 48 quart cooler-style mash tun. But I can't... I end up with leftover water once the cooler is full at the sparge stage, and then have to sparge twice. I've tried cramming as much of my water bill as possible into the 'strike water stage' in order to lessen the sparge volume, but I still end up with having to sparge twice.
Does anyone have the faintest idea on how to calculate, for real, how big of a mashtun I need? I have the choice between a 70 qrt and 100 qrt cooler to build a new tun and there's a HUGE price difference. Some math widardry would really help!