Igloo 53007 Party Barrel | Beverage Cooler | CateringSuppliesDepot.com
Has anyone here gone as far as having this nice round insulated cooler with a lid to use as a mashtun? It's already drilled for a spigot and I'm seriously considering it. The nice thing is that due to it being round it works out a bit better than a rectangular cooler for grain depth of smaller batches.
Rectangular Coleman 100qt cooler 360 square inches base surface area.
This cooler at 109qt is 348 square inches base surface area. I can't find a good internal dimensions for a 120qt rectantular to compare since this falls in between.
My current 52qt rectangular cooler has a surface area of 180 square inches. If I make the grain bed 6" its between 4gal and 5gal. I rarely even make a simple 5/6 gal batch of low gravity beers anymore. So I'm normally hitting at least 8/9" grain depths which is between 7/8 gallons of volume.
Now based on the volume of a cylinder a 6" grain bed which I consider to be about a minimum to have a decent depth would be approximately 7 gallons worth of space. That's a fairly small batch and would only half fill my current mash tun. So based on my 6" depth standard that puts me at between 8 and 9 gal of volume in the 109qt round cooler.
The reason for this is some input. I'm in the market for a new larger mash tun and I am torn between one of the mash hawks, and this behemoth. The mash hawk has enough space for me as does this cooler. The only difference is this is 100% usable space vs the mash hawk having all that dead space. Sure I could cut the dead space off but I'd be concerned that if I cut it off it'd make the structural integrity suffer when loaded down with grain and water. The other issue is I don't know what material the cooler is made with and whether or not it could leach toxins into my wort.
Has anyone here gone as far as having this nice round insulated cooler with a lid to use as a mashtun? It's already drilled for a spigot and I'm seriously considering it. The nice thing is that due to it being round it works out a bit better than a rectangular cooler for grain depth of smaller batches.
Rectangular Coleman 100qt cooler 360 square inches base surface area.
This cooler at 109qt is 348 square inches base surface area. I can't find a good internal dimensions for a 120qt rectantular to compare since this falls in between.
My current 52qt rectangular cooler has a surface area of 180 square inches. If I make the grain bed 6" its between 4gal and 5gal. I rarely even make a simple 5/6 gal batch of low gravity beers anymore. So I'm normally hitting at least 8/9" grain depths which is between 7/8 gallons of volume.
Now based on the volume of a cylinder a 6" grain bed which I consider to be about a minimum to have a decent depth would be approximately 7 gallons worth of space. That's a fairly small batch and would only half fill my current mash tun. So based on my 6" depth standard that puts me at between 8 and 9 gal of volume in the 109qt round cooler.
The reason for this is some input. I'm in the market for a new larger mash tun and I am torn between one of the mash hawks, and this behemoth. The mash hawk has enough space for me as does this cooler. The only difference is this is 100% usable space vs the mash hawk having all that dead space. Sure I could cut the dead space off but I'd be concerned that if I cut it off it'd make the structural integrity suffer when loaded down with grain and water. The other issue is I don't know what material the cooler is made with and whether or not it could leach toxins into my wort.
