10 gallon batch in a 10 gal round Igloo?

[512Brew]

I wanna try a 10 gal AG batch with 20.5 lbs of malt in my 10 gal cooler. So my question is with roughly 6.5 gal of strike water and the malt will there be enough room to mash and then adding sparge water? I know it'll be close, but it always seems like alot more room in the cooler to double it up.

 

[IrregularPulse]

http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

That's roughly 1.25quart per pound. 1.25 quarts per pound with a 20.5 pound grain bill will take up 8.05G of room. So yes.

 

[nebben]

I've done this with a ~5.4% ABV beer. Yes.

 

[dmcoates]

I just did the same thing. I did not have enough room to add boiling water to mash out.
I was batch sparging so if you are batch sparging you will have to sparge two times, adding half of the sparge water each time.

Another thing i didnt do right was heat the sparge water hot enough. Beersmith said 170s but that did not get the gain bed up to 165.

After reading around guys say use 190* water to get the gain bed to 165-170

 

[zymurgy101]

Don't forget to allocate for the space under your false bottom (if you are using one).

I'm doing ten gallon batches (20 lbs of grain) in my ten gallon cooler, but using the Brutus 20 method and recirculating all of my water the entire time (no sparge). Next brew day will be my third time using this method and I hope to get my efficiency up a bit...horrible thus far.

 

[nebben]

Not sparging and getting terrible efficiency? Isn't this an expected outcome if you aren't sparging?

 

[HighLadderBrews]

If you using a Brutus system, you don't need really need to recirculate the entire time. I've got 3-20 gallon Blichmanns using a heat exchanger in HLT to keep mash temps within 1-2 degrees for entire conversion time (like you). Vorlaufing doesn't need to be done the entire time. Try insulating your mash tun, will save on propane costs.

You should be sparging if you want any kind of efficiency.

I'm assuming your HLT kettle is direct fired so why dont you increase the temps in your HLT to 169 (keep recirculating), then fly sparge with HLT. We do it this way and get between 85-87% each batch.

just my .02

 

[zymurgy101]

OK, I don't want to derail the OP's thread! However, I wanted to clarify something in my post that may be of useful info to the OP depending upon setup.

I misspoke earlier; my setup is like a Brutus 20, not Brutus 10. I just have a 15g boilermaker on a top tier burner (floor standing) recirculating through the pump to an autosparge valve into the RubberMaid 10gal cooler and then gravity feeding from the cooler(MLT) back into the kettle. Not mentioned was a thermometer issue on the MLT and the temps were all over the place which might have had a bit to do with efficiency.