3 gallon batches mash tun

Hey guys,

I'm going to make the move to all grain, but I'm not all that interested in doing full 5 gallon batches. I'm the only one that drinks beer in my house, and I get tired of the same style. I think 3 gallons will encourage me to brew more often and try out different styles/ingredients as well.

Here's the question. If I built a mash tun out of a 5 gallon cooler, would that allow me to do bigger beers like stouts? Or should I just spend the extra $20 for a 10 gallon?

 

I brew 2.5 gallon batches in the Mr Beer keg with homade extract/steeping recipes, point being Mr. Beer lbks work good

Sent from my SPH-L300 using Home Brew mobile app

 

Why not try BIAB? Investment is cheap. With 2.5 to 3 gal recipes, you can do it on your stove top pretty easily.

 

Wifey doesn't like the smell of beer brewing. Best to keep her happy and take this hobby outdoors.

 

Go with a 10 gal. Cooler. You'l have more room for big beers. I do 3 gal. batches all the time in my 10 gal. Cooler with no heat loss.

 

I guess it depends if you ever see yourself going to high gravity 5gal batches. If you do, get the 10gal.

A 5gal will handle HG batches in 2.5-3gal sizes, but it gets full fast. That doesn't bother me, but it might you.

I'm happy with my 5gal. For now.

 

Isn't this the way all home brewers are? Always happy but with one eye on neater toys.

 

Are you looking into using a cylindrical cooler or a rectangular cooler for your mash tun?

 

OKCAg2002 - Totally.

That's why I'm quietly building full electric BIAB with recirc setup with PID and a CFC - hoping that if I buy things one at a time and scrounge where I can, I'll have it by summer without the SWMBO being aware..

 

I'm probably looking at a 5 gallon cylindrical cooler (i.e. orange igloo cooler). My thought is that the 10 would be overkill for a 3 gallon batch. The smaller amount of dead space would probably help hold the temp of the mash as well.

 

Good choice imo! I do 3 g batches and I can't imagine using anything over 8 g pot. Anything less than a high gravity batch would like like a little puddle in a 10g pot! Something with a ~12" diameter works out well. A ~2 gallon mash volume is a decent depth of water. In a 14" diameter pot its nothing.

I currently use a 5g. I pretty much decided to move to two of these 26 quart (6.5 g) pots in a Brutus 20 setup, electric.
http://m.ebay.com/itm?itemId=200939779200

 

I don't know if the have the big box store Menards where you are at but they sell 5 gallon drink coolers for around $16.

 

No. We don't have that. We do have Academy stores. They sell them for about $22. Thanks, though!

 

A 5-gallon round beverage cooler is ideal for 3-gallon batches and the occasional normal gravity 5-gallon batch if you use traditional continuous sparging. One of the reasons why I quit brewing was that I found myself dumping perfectly good batches in order to be able to brew often enough to keep my yeast bank healthy. I like to be able to propagate a brewing culture whenever I subculture a slant. I could not do that when I brewed 5-gallon batches because the beer would queue up to the point where I would not have free keg space available for several months. I wound up performing a lot of slant-to-slant subculturing just to keep my thirty-plus culture bank in good shape.

I decided to limit my kegged batch size to 3-gallons when I caught the bug again last summer. I re-scaled all of my recipes to yield 3.75 end-of-boil kettle gallons and 3.5 primary gallons, which easily yields 3 full gallons of kegged clear beer. My entire brewery is designed around this batch size. I use modified 5-gallon Igloo industrial beverage coolers as my mash/lauter tun and hot liquor back (I soft-plumbed my Adventures in Homebrewing false bottom in order to make cleaning easier), a modified 27-quart Vollrath Optio 3506 stockpot as my kettle, and a Camp Chef Pro 30 as my stove (I like this stove even more than I liked my old Superb PC-100).

By the way, my first beverage cooler-based mash tun was a 10-gallon Gott (Rubbermaid). I really disliked mashing normal gravity 5-gallon batches in that cooler. I continuous sparge and there is just too much empty space in a 10-gallon cooler with a normal gravity beer. I moved to using a 7-gallon Rubbermaid beverage cooler as my mash tun in the second half of the nineties. In my humble opinion, 7-gallons is the perfect size for 5-gallon batches for people who use traditional sparging. A 7-gallon beverage cooler is large enough to handle high-gravity grists and small enough to hold temperature well through the end of the sparge when mashing normal gravity grists.

Here are a few photos of my current setup (it easily fits on a card table):




I chose to use a 27-quart Vollrath Optio 3506 stockpot as my kettle because it has a 1:1 height to diameter ratio (the stockpot is also induction ready). I went with a sanitary-welded 316 3/8" high pressure coupler (the weld cost almost as much as the stockpot), 316 close nipple, 316 ball valve, 304 hose barb, and an internal KettleValve 3/8" boil screen.

Kettle Weld



Inside the Kettle




Inside the Mash Tun




In the end, I know that 3-gallon brew houses are not for everyone. They are expensive to build compared to 5-gallon brew houses, especially when 3-gallon kegs are factored into the equation. However, for me, it was about having a brew house that was tailored to my standard production batch size. I also own an American-made Polar Ware 321BP 32-quart brew pot with false bottom for boiling the occasional 5-gallon batch. I could boil a normal gravity 5-gallon batch in my custom-built 6.75-gallon kettle, but it wouldn't be fun.

By the way, I purchased my Igloo industrial beverage coolers from Zoro Tools (the retail arm of Grainger). They are the cheapest source for this model on the Internet.

 

Awesome setup, now I have a template to go by

 

If you end up going with the Adventures in Homebrewing false bottom and want to go with a soft-plumbed setup, you will need to order a stainless steel 1/2'' MPT x 3/8'' barb 90-degree elbow (item #73-4109) and two stainless steel lock nuts. The standard additional hardware kit is for hard-plumbed installation. The 9" 16% open area Adventures in Homebrewing false bottom (item #99-2649) is the nicest false bottom that I have ever used. It's much nicer than the round hole perforated domed false bottom that I used to use, and the edges are smooth.

The ball valve assemblies came from bargainfittings.com. However, to be completely honest, they are a luxury. I only use them to shut off flow completely. All fine flow adjustments are made with the clamps. My old tuns and hot liquor backs did not have ball valves. I removed the valve assemblies that shipped with the coolers, left the gasket in place, inserted a piece of racking cane into a #2 1/2 rubber stopper, and pushed the rubber stopper into the hole from the inside of the cooler on my early cooler-based mash tuns and hot liquor backs. I attached a small section of tubing to the racking cane on the outside of the cooler, and used a hose clamp like on my current setup. I used a plastic bulkhead fitting instead of a piece of racking cane and a #2.5 stopper on my second generation mash tun.

 

No reason you can't do small batches outdoors BIAB. That makes a cheap option, keeps SWAMBO happy, and can let you brew any kind of beer you want.

 

I am tempted to start BIAB in my 12qt SS pot for 2.5g batches, will that be enough?

 

I would suspect that the smallest usable stockpot for a 2.5-gallon BIAB setup would be 16 to 18 quarts.

 

Blarg!ill have to stick to extracts. Just bottled your Kiss mild today

 

I come awfully close to the top of my twenty quart for that size of batch/

 

I do 3 gal batches & use a 7 1/2 gal Igloo cooler w/ a copper manifold. The 7 1/2 gal gives you a much better geometry for better mash efficiency plus you have added room for the occasional "big" beer.
Edit: it is a Rubbermaid 7 1/2 gal cooler.

 

No.

A 3gal (12qt) pot is barely big enough for a 1.5gal batch. It will result in a mess, excessive cleaning, and some choice words.

Definitely recommend going a minimum of 5gal (20qt), and up from there.

 

Same here.

 

If you are referring to the Rubbermaid 7-gallon beverage cooler shown below that some websites sell as a 7.5 gallon cooler, there's absolutely no way that that cooler with a slotted manifold will outperform a 5-gallon beverage cooler with a proper false bottom when mashing a 3-gallon batch of normal gravity beer. I used a Rubbermaid 7-gallon beverage cooler with a well-designed false bottom to make 5-gallon batches for several years. In my humble opinion, the Rubbermaid 7-gallon cooler is the ideal mash tun for 5 to 6-gallon batches. However, the mash bed is just too shallow when mashing 4 to 7 pounds of grain. The Rubbermaid 7-gallon doesn't start to shine until the mash bed contains around 10 pounds of grist.



7-Gallon Rubbermaid Beverage Cooler

 

I use a 5 gal beverage cooler for 5 gallon batches up to 1.070 or so. Although I have to batch sparge twice. While I am planning an upgrade to a 10 gallon, this is for 5 gallon batches. I couldn't imagine ever needing a 10 gallon for a 3 gallon batch. Probably less heat loss with a 5 too

 

Thanks guys! I think it'll be a 5 gallon for me. In not a huge fan of stouts and porters, but I do enjoy one occasionally. I could always do a 2.5 gallon batch for those. Cheers and happy brewing over the holidays.

 

Sorry to re-open a long dead thread, but I’m on this exact issue now myself. I’m the only one in my house who drinks beer. The homebrew world pretty much revolves around 5 gallon batches and larger. I also have taken to 3 gallon batches. I have several 3 gallon kegs.

I own and have been using a 5 gallon cylindrical Gott cooler which I have fitted with a false bottom and a ball valve. I’ve used this as my mash tun for a long time. It works great for 5 gallon batches of medium gravity beers. When I wanted to do barleywine or ultra high gravity brews I always supplemented the mash with DME.

Recently I bought a brew bag and have taken to putting that inside the mash tun cooler as an additional layer of filtration. It also really makes cleaning out spent grain much easier.

However, I am running into clarity issues now. Especially when I brew lower gravity batches, like bitter or blonde ale where I am using 6.5 lbs of grain for 3 gallons. I suspect its because the depth of the grain bed is too shallow with these batches for proper recirculation. I recirculate for 40 minutes and it doesn’t get any clearer. I haven’t brewed anything higher in gravity for awhile that would use more grain. I am also wondering if besides the grain bed depth whether adding the brew bag had an impact. It isn’t necessary but it sure helps with cleanup.

I’m thinking that a 5 gallon Gott cooler is just too big for lower gravity batches using 6 or 6.5 pounds of grain and a 10 gallon somebody mentioned earlier would just be ridiculous. I am going to try to set up another mash tun smaller than 5 gallons for my 3 gallon lower gravity and session beers. I don’t think I’m sold yet on brew in a bag. Had clarity issues with that too. And with a smaller pot doing brew in a bag I think heat retention would be an issue during the mash. I don’t know that it won’t be an issue with a smaller cooler, either.

Another thought that occurs to me is to either step back up to 5 gallons for lower gravity batches so the grain bed is deep enough or try to do lower gravity batches parti-gyle. Calculate the amount of grain for a 6 gallon batch and run 2 different beers at once. Like a Pale Ale off the first runnings and a bitter off the second runnings.

 

Back when I was doing all-grain I did three gallon batches in a ten gallon Coleman square cooler.

 

@bwible, I do mostly 5gal batches but also do 3gal batches. I do full volume no sparge for the 3 gal batches using a RIMS setup with a 8gal mash tun(recently switch to a 11gal bayou classic). It is like 5lb of grain and 5gals of water. I get good clarity but I continuously recirculate for the entire mash. I also condition my grain and mill at about .035 so there is not a lot of flour.

Prior to getting the RIMS I used a 5gal cooler and did a single sparge(mash and one sparge) batch sparge with good clarity so it can be done. Maybe look at your grind.

 

I brew mostly low ABV beers for three gallon kegs in a ten gallon cooler all the time. If you are having problems with clarity consider opening the ball valve less to slow the flow rate to avoid channeling and keep more of an active filter.

 

Clarity issues with wort going into the fermenter, or clarity issues with the finished beer? I am not sold on the idea that clear wort = clear beer, and experiments seems to show that some trub into the fermenter produces clearer beers. I don't care much about crystal-clear beers, but I did not notice much difference in the clarity of my final beers when I moved from sparging to BAIB. I have never tried a recirculation setup.

I do 2.5 gal (target 2.6 or 2.7 into fermenter) batches BIAB in a 5 gal pot (stove top).

 

https://www.anvilbrewing.com/-p/anv-foundry-6.5.htm

I just saw this and it looks like it would be just about ideal for 3 gallon batches. Problem is they don’t have any for sale right now.

They have a 6.5 gallon version which says the grain capacity is 8 pounds. They have a 10 gallon version which says the grain capacity is 16 pounds.

Looks like it comes with everything you need. Those guys at Anvil are great. I have one of their 5 gallon kettles and their heavy duty brewing spoon

 

If I didn't already have the much more $$ Braumeister, I would be buying that 6.5 gal Anvil Foundry pretty much yesterday. It seems ideal for smaller batch, all-in-one electric brewing.

 

I have the 6.5 gallon Anvil and it is perfectly sized fro the 2.5 to 3 gallon batch size. I have yet to push the limits on grain capacity but expect that I will in the next couple of months. From what others have said about the 10.5 gallon unit, Anvil is pretty conservative on the capacity limit.