Hey all,
My wife bought me a 6.5G Fermonster for my birthday. While this is excellent and highly exciting I'm stuck with a 4G pot.
My last brew day I did a 5.5G AG batch and attempted to do a partial boil. Issue 1 being it damn near overfilled my pot trying to keep the 1.25q/lb ratio. Issue 2 being my efficiency sucked and I ended up with a 3% beer over what was supposed to be a 5%.
I do have a 5G Igloo cooler that I can use as the mash tun, but I'm trying to get a handle on the whole process as this is the first time I've done anything other than 2.5G batches for my LBK's. I've been doing 2.5G AG BIAB batches for over two years, and so now doing a full batch is requiring some tweaking.
No, I do not have the money for any additional equipment, I will be upgrading my pot, just can't at the moment and I would like to brew again this weekend. I have had a hard time meeting my mash temps in the cooler before so I stopped using it and went back to insulating my pot.
So...
Would it be better to try to get the cooler thing working, or take another gamble insulating the pot and hoping my efficiency doesn't suffer as bad? I did do a rinse of the grain, and I was contemplating putting 2G of warm/hot water in the cooler to use as a dunk/swirl rinse station between mash and boil.
My wife bought me a 6.5G Fermonster for my birthday. While this is excellent and highly exciting I'm stuck with a 4G pot.
My last brew day I did a 5.5G AG batch and attempted to do a partial boil. Issue 1 being it damn near overfilled my pot trying to keep the 1.25q/lb ratio. Issue 2 being my efficiency sucked and I ended up with a 3% beer over what was supposed to be a 5%.
I do have a 5G Igloo cooler that I can use as the mash tun, but I'm trying to get a handle on the whole process as this is the first time I've done anything other than 2.5G batches for my LBK's. I've been doing 2.5G AG BIAB batches for over two years, and so now doing a full batch is requiring some tweaking.
No, I do not have the money for any additional equipment, I will be upgrading my pot, just can't at the moment and I would like to brew again this weekend. I have had a hard time meeting my mash temps in the cooler before so I stopped using it and went back to insulating my pot.
So...
Would it be better to try to get the cooler thing working, or take another gamble insulating the pot and hoping my efficiency doesn't suffer as bad? I did do a rinse of the grain, and I was contemplating putting 2G of warm/hot water in the cooler to use as a dunk/swirl rinse station between mash and boil.