10G SS Mega pot as a MT for 5 gallon batches

[CanadianQuaffer]

Would it work or would it be too big?

It's one of the 10g SS Mega Pots from Northern Brewer. Really nice pot. Spigot and Blichmann temp guage.

I'm toying with the idea of using it as a mash tun for 5 gallon AG batches. Would it be too big? In order for the thermometer to work, you need to put at least 5 gallons of water in there in order to reach the probe, which is my main concern, I'd really like to make use of the thermometer when mashing.

Thanks!

Nick

 

[724b]

That would work great for 5 gallon batches.

I have that kettle. Maybe they've changed it by now but on mine, the thermometer is at around 5.5 inches. That's about 4.77 gallons to reach the thermometer.

The only issue I ran into with that kettle was heating up strike and sparge water for 5 gallon batches. Many times I would not hit the thermometer with the amount of water I needed to do. The easy work around is to just heat up more water than you need.

 

[CanadianQuaffer]

How many gallons of water would you use for the mash in a 5 gallon recipe?

As for sparging, I'm probably going to get a 2nd burner and add a spigot to a 9 gallon aluminum put I have for use as a HLT.

 

[724b]

That depends on the amount of grain. For example's sake, on my system, I would use 4.5 gallons of strike water for a 5 gallon recipe that uses 12 lbs of grain.

How many gallons of water would you use for the mash in a 5 gallon recipe?

As for sparging, I'm probably going to get a 2nd burner and add a spigot to a 9 gallon aluminum put I have for use as a HLT.

 

[Ital]

I have only got one AG batch under my belt (using a 10gal MegaPot w/ false bottom), and thought it worked great. My only concern is doing high-gravity brews with this 10gal size. The false bottom takes up 2gal of space, so you are really left with 8gal of mash space. Perhaps the water:grain ratio could be played with to make it work, but I have not put much thought into this yet. Due to the 2gal "dead space", I went with a thinner mash.

If I could do it again, I'd probably opt for the 15gal size to allow for high-gravity brews and/or 10-gal batches.

 

[CanadianQuaffer]

So if I just want to do 5 gallon batches from here on out, would a 9 gallon brew pot and HLT, both aluminum, and the 10 gallon SS MT work out well?