Am I crazy for trying to mash a 10 gal batch in a 10 gal mash-lauter tun?

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jamied

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HI! I am trying to up my yield to 10 gallons. I've been comfortably mashing 5 gal batches in my 10 gallon cooler/mash-lauter tun. The grain bill for the recipe I want to do uses 18lb of grain. I ran the numbers for the mash water and it would require 6 gals. I'm just not sure how high the level will be when I combine the two In my 10 gal mash-lauter tun and it could be a majestic mess if it went south...
 
I use a 13 gal keggle as a mash tun. I tend to mash a bit thin and its fine for most 10/11gal brews. I do run out of space or have to mash thicker when doing a higher gravity brew(or reduce the total output volume).
I think 10 might be tight though.
 
i make 10 gallon batches in my round cooler all the time with 20-23lb's grain and 7 gallons of water....fills it up perfectly.....

i do mix it up in a 15 gallon kettle first though...not sure how your enzymes would be effected with slowly adding strike water to the cooler....
 
I use a 13 gal keggle as a mash tun. I tend to mash a bit thin and its fine for most 10/11gal brews. I do run out of space or have to mash thicker when doing a higher gravity brew(or reduce the total output volume).
I think 10 might be tight though.
Basically using your mash tun for lautering? That's what I do when doing cereal or step mashes in the kettle.
 
My mash tun is 12 gallon and can cope with up to 27lbs of grain, so that's a rate of 2.33lbs per gallon. Based on that, your 10 gallon mash tun should cope with about 23lbs of grain. The trick is not adding all of the grain at once - crushed grain soaks up water and ends up taking up less volume, so if you dump it all in at once it overflows. The same happens if you dump water quickly on top of grain - the grain will float and spill. Add some grain to water, mix, add a bit more, mix etc. or underlet water slowly into the grain so it soaks in as it fills.
 
My mash tun is a 15.5 gallon kettle with a false bottom. I aim for 17.5 gallons in my fermentor leaving 1.5 gallons in kettle an have no issue hitting up to 1.060 OG. Haven’t tried anything bigger than that in quite a while but much higher than that I’d be adding some sugar in the brew kettle anyway. My boil kettle holds about 22 gallons so I sparge till I’ve collected 20 gallons.

one additional thing I can do is continue sparging after I fill my bk into a bucket and then boil these last runnings in another kettle and boil them in parallel and combine at the end.
 
That's a qualitative question - some people can live with latency and frame drops, others (like me), not so much.
This is more a quantitative question, and I was poised to enter the same solution as @myndflyte but was beaten to the punch :)

It either fits, or doesn't. In this case, it fits...

Cheers!
 
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