Mast tun size

I am new to all grain brewing and I have a question about how big of a mash tun I should use. I have seen a lot of threads about this and most say if you are going to do a barley wine use a 10 gallon. I am more interested in lower gravity beers. I also work at a hardware store that I can get everything for a mash tun extremely cheap except a 10 gallon water cooler. I have a 5 gallon cooler in stock that I can get cheap. So my question is should I buy the 5 or just go to home depot and get one of there nice 10 gallon ones. Thanks

 

I would not get anything less than a 10 gallon mash tun. I'd also suspect a barley wine would appreciate a larger mash tun.

This is a great tool for exactly your situation...
http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

 

I bought a 70 qt. coleman cooler dirt cheap at walmart. Works great for big stouts and barleywines. My concern in the beginning was my efficiency when making smaller beers, but I have experienced no problems. Sometimes getting 80% efficiency making smaller beers. Made a big stout last month with 26 pounds of grain and no worries about it all not fitting. Love my big cooler.

 

Does anyone have an opinion on whether a water cooler or regular can cooler is better for mashing?

 

Some people think the corners of a rectangular cooler might be hard to mix and maybe cooler than the center of the mash compared to a round cooler. Though there are plenty that use them without problem.

I have the 10 gallon Rubbermaid water cooler from HD. I have not tried a Barleywine yet but have done some high gravity brews. All have fit in easily.

Unless you know you will only do 5 gallon batches of lower gravity recipes I would go 10 gallon or larger.

 

I'm sure every AG brewer has an opinion on this. I've used both to make a Hunahpu clone. 50 lb of grain, so i put 25 in my daughters igloo cooler and 25 in my rectangular coleman cooler. The rectangular had a higher og than the igloo, but my biggest lesson i learned that day is that I prefer a stainless braid over a false bottom. My daughters igloo has the false bottom and I had a terrible time with a stuck sparge. Maybe because i had 25 lbs of grain stufffed in there, but it was a rough time with that igloo.

 

I have a five and a ten. (Long story, but when I started doing AG, I made small batches using the five as the Mash tun and got a false bottom for it.Then I moved up to full sized batches and use a ten gal with a false bottom.)

I kept the small one because it's perfect for batches that use less than 10 lbs of grain. In that case, the 10-gal is my HLT. When I use more grain, I use the 10 as the Mash tun. With a thin mash and mash out, I never need more than 4 gal of sparge water, so the 5 is a perfect HLT.

The best part: the 5 nests inside the 10 for really efficient storage.

EDIT: the five gal is what I use for all my 1.050ish beers. If you make lower gravity beers like that, the five will be perfect.

 

This stickied thread might help:


http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/how-big-your-mash-tun-needs-123585/


Ideally you wouldn't want a ton of empty headspace in most of your mashes re: greater potential to lose temp (though many have said that putting foil on top of the mash helps with this).

 

Ya I have seen that thread and it is helpful. I think I will go ahead and buy the 10 gallon but I have an old cooler that's 48quarts. I am just wondering which I better. I feel like the water cooler will b more heat efficient and easier to store.

 

Unsolicited advice warning: cut out some styrofoam circles the same diameter as the inside of the cooler. Put them in a crockpot liner bag and rest it on top of the mash. That eliminates the headspace and makes it much, much easier to hold the temp.

 

Does head space matter if you are recirculating with a Herms or Rims? I've obtained a 25 gallon stainless mash tun for a good price but will most likely only do 10 gallon batches to start with. That's a lot of head space but should I be concerned if recirculating?

 

Any thermal loss issues are definitely minimized in a / by a RIMS or HERMS setup. They're not null (there's factors involved - flow rate, volume, etc), but minimized. I'd say you would likely not have to worry, but it'd be worth checking temps in different points in the mash to see how uniformly it ends up holding temp throughout.