For the last 5 years I have been using igloo 5 gallon water cooler for my mashing. I do the batch sparge brewing. Which has been great for me. I’m want to expand and do 10 gallons instead of 5 and decided that maybe I should make one out of a regular cooler. I found helpful tips on the web. Most helpful was Denny Conn little page. One question I have is how big of a cooler will I need to do 10-13 gallons of wort. Also if any one knows any thing that they would of done different on their’s would be helpful or something wish they would have done.
Came across this little page when I was googling for the same thing.
http://www.homebrewdad.com/view_page.php?pageid=1
Looks like a 10 gallon is the most versatile. Another page I found said that a 10 gal mashtun will max out at 10 gallons of wort at around 1.060 gravity. Any higher than that and you would need to go bigger.
I have 48, 70, and 152 qt. rectangular coolers. I find the 70 qt. to be the most useful. You can do 5 or 10 gal. batches, low or high gravity, really easily. I have heard people voice concerns about heat loss with a 5 gal. batch in a 70 qt., but in reality I haven’t found it to be a problem. I far prefer rectangular coolers to round ones for batch sparging.
Yes, yes, all good info, but what color cooler works best 
Obviously the answer is blue…amature
Obviously the answer is blue…amature
[/quote]
A blue cooler gives you 117% efficiency. That means that after 6 brews, a bag of malt magically appears in your garage.
[quote=“Denny”]
A blue cooler gives you 117% efficiency. That means that after 6 brews, a bag of malt magically appears in your garage.[/quote]
Gotta love science :cheers:
Thank you all for the replays going tomorrow to get most the stuff needed to build my new mash tun. I am following Denny’s instructions. Which has been very helpful. I have a friend that works at a mill works shop and has got a piece of stainless like thet use for false bottoms in the water coolers that he has rolled into a tube for me that I will be using as my filter. I may even insert it in the stainless braid. Also thank you Matt for the link that helped a lot too.
It could be a problem, depending on a number of factors. Most important is how well insulated the cooler is and what is the ambient temperature. The lower the mass of the mash, the bigger the problem is, so that may explain why Denny (life begins at 60) hasn’t had problems. You really can drop a lot of degrees if you are doing a 5 gallon session beer.
It could be a problem, depending on a number of factors. Most important is how well insulated the cooler is and what is the ambient temperature. The lower the mass of the mash, the bigger the problem is, so that may explain why Denny (life begins at 60) hasn’t had problems. You really can drop a lot of degrees if you are doing a 5 gallon session beer.
It could be a problem, depending on a number of factors. Most important is how well insulated the cooler is and what is the ambient temperature. The lower the mass of the mash, the bigger the problem is, so that may explain why Denny (life begins at 60) hasn’t had problems. You really can drop a lot of degrees if you are doing a 5 gallon session beer.[/quote]
I’ve done a number of 5 gal. 1.050 beers in the 70 qt. with no problem. Nothing lower than that, though.
It could be a problem, depending on a number of factors. Most important is how well insulated the cooler is and what is the ambient temperature. The lower the mass of the mash, the bigger the problem is, so that may explain why Denny (life begins at 60) hasn’t had problems. You really can drop a lot of degrees if you are doing a 5 gallon session beer.[/quote]
I’ve done a number of 5 gal. 1.050 beers in the 70 qt. with no problem. Nothing lower than that, though.[/quote]
I’ve also done several 1.050 beers and a 1.043 in my 70qt cooler and never have a problem holding temp. I preheat the cooler by bringing my strike water temp a few deg high then let it sit in the cooler for a min before I dough in.
Is there a certain brand that’s better insulated than other? I’m using a 5 gal Rubbermaid which works because I do mostly <5gallon batches but am thinking about getting a bigger one also
I prefer Coleman coolers because the spigot is located closer to the floor of the cooler than other brands I’ve seen. In terms of insulation, they all seem about the same.
