Anvil foundry and cooler mashing

[Durand.Thomas29]

I have an anvil foundry 10.5 and there’s a 16lb grain limit on those. I’ve seen other posts about doing a double mash to get high abv beers where you mash, dump into a holding kettle, then mash again and combine. This just seems like a lot of work and a lot of time to commit to two mashes.

So I was wondering if anyone has tried or if it makes sense to have a secondary mash ton cooler that’s placed higher than the anvil then use a pump to pump from the bottom of the anvil to the cooler mashton then gravity feed to the anvil. That way you could have grain in both the anvil and cooler.

The idea is if you can manage your flow rate you could affectively increase your mash size and do both mashes in one mash for a high abv beer.

Does this make sense?
I don’t want to commit to making a cooler mash ton if it’s not going to work. But I don’t see why it wouldn’t. Cause it should just act as a extension to the anvil right?

 

[Sam_92]

That seems like a really cool idea to me! You could probably use a five gallon water cooler and build it for around $60. I don't own an Anvil but it seems to me the only thing that could kill the plan would be the pump not being strong enough to pump that extra three feet. You could probably do a dry run with a bottling bucket just to test it.

 

[tracer bullet]

A nice thing w/ the Anvil is the all-in-one convenience. And I'd say the 10.5 can go higher for grain, but you need a false bottom and bag and ditch the pipe inside. You could do 18, maybe 20lbs according to others (I have the 6.5). A bucket sparge and a lot of boiling could do what you want too and not be too inconvenient. Or do say a 4 gallon batch.

But - absolutely no reason not to mash in a larger cooler (be sure it's a lot more than 10.5 gallons or there's no point). You could still heat the strike water for it in the Anvil, and then of course collect the wort in the Anvil later to boil and so on.

I think it basically depends if you already own said cooler, or plan to do this often.

 

[Durand.Thomas29]

I still have couple brew days already lined up so mayb I’ll look into making a cooler mash ton to try it out.

the Anvil pump is pretty strong out of the box but I never thought about that so I’m definitely going to run some tests, because I’ll be less inclined if I have to buy a new pump