Mashing in lauter tun question? New to AG

[HootHootHoot]

New to all grain and trying to get all of my equipment ready for my first batch.

I have a ten gal rubbermaid cooler that i will be converting into a mashing/lauter tun. My question is, is this fairly standard practice? To mash in the lauter tun?

Reading on the process, I've got the impression that I might need to mash in my 5 gal pot? Mashing temperature for 60 to 90 minutes and then I read that I need to increase the temperature to kill the enzymes and then sparge from there.

My thought process was get my desired temp in the cooler, let it sit for required time, then drain and recirculate until the wort is clear, then sparge with required temp water.

Will this process work? Again, new to all grain and trying to figure out how most people do it, since what I read can be contradictory.

I am getting a 7.5 gal brew kettle to go along with my 5 gal so that I can avoid boil overs. Or do I not even need the 7.5? My thought was mashing in 4 gal of water approximately and then adding about a gallon during sparging would probably result in a boil over in a 5 gal pot.

 

[astropunk]

Do a youtube search for "batch sparge", and you will find more information than you need to know!

And you will need a 7+ gallon pot for boiling a full batch. You will likely be boiling 6 or more gallons to yield 5-5.25 gallons in the fermenter, so ideally you would have an 8 or 9 gallon kettle.

 

[jsled]

Yes, that's why it's called a "mash[/lauter] tun". The temperature increase you refer to is called the "mash out", and serves two purposes: first, to stop enzymatic activity, but also to increase the viscosity of the mash runnings. Neither are really strictly required for homebrewers.

I too recommend looking into batch sparging. In short, you'll do something like a 5g mash (the grains will absorb some of that) and then a 3g sparge (roughly; use a mash calculator) to get 6g in the kettle, boiling down to 5g. Batch sparging is nice as, after you recirculate/vorlauf, you can simply drain the mash tun, add your sparge water, wait, recirc/vorlauf again and drain again. No balancing flow rates or worrying (as much) about channeling as in fly sparging.

And, yeah, at least a 7g pot, but I'd recommend more like 9 or 10 myself, for future re-use.