Any reason I can't?

[Iowa Home Brewer]

Any reason I can't use a 10 gallon round cooler/tun to control mash temperature?
I would first heat the strike water. Then pump the water in to the tun (taking into account for heat loss through pump, hoses, and loss in heating the tun). Also I'm not lifting the kettle. Bad back.
Mash, then pump back into boil kettle? Or am I making this way to hard for BIAB?
One thing I don't want to do is keep firing the propane heater to keep the temps in the kettle. It's far to cold to expect it to hold temperature. And, no, I don't want to wrap my kettle with anything. Yep, I'm lazy like that.

 

[robfar]

That will work fine, not really BIAB, though. It would just be a traditional no-sparge mash. Lot of brewers put a bag in the cooler for filtering, though most use a false bottom. Brew on!

 

[Iowa Home Brewer]

Yes, the bag would only be in the cooler. And it does have a false bottom.
Thanks for the reply !

 

[Velnerj]

This is my set up basically. It's called mash in a bag. But I use a 5 gallon cooler and batch Sparge. Usually works great. Good luck!

 

[CascadesBrewer]

It's far to cold to expect it to hold temperature. And, no, I don't want to wrap my kettle with anything. Yep, I'm lazy like that.

It probably gets a little colder in Iowa than here in Northern Virginia...but it really shocked me how well wrapping my kettle with a sleeping bag holds temps even on 25F days. It often drops around 1F to 2F over an hour. I picked up a sleeping bag from Walmart for around $25.

If you have the 10 gallon cooler and want to put it to use, that is cool. I expect your kettle wrapped in a sleeping basket will hold temps even better (those coolers are not really that well insulated). It seems a lot easier to wrap the kettle than to transfer the water and wort between two containers.