Is A 15l Mash Tun Big Enough For A 20l Batch?

[mick8882003]

Yea I'm a little worried that the cooler I bought is a little small for my mash tun. Its 15L, should that be big enough?
Oh yes and I just tested it for heat and it only dropped 2.5 in an hour, that's without a blanket. I intend to get a few foam cut outs for the lid and a few blankets for the real deal.
Oh yes I am aiming for a 20L batch.

 

[deebee]

In my old 10l bucket-in-bucket I could mash almost 2kg of grain. In my 42l esky tun I can mash about 8kg at a pinch. I reckon you will be pushing it unless you are making partials. You can actually make very simple uncomplicated beer by mashing a few kilos of grain, adding a kit (!!) for bitterness and throwing some flavour and aroma hops in at the end.

To minimise heat loss, put a couple of litres of boiling water in there for 20 minutes before mash in.

 

[Gavo]

I have a 15lt cooler for a mash tun and so far have mashed up to 2.5kg of grain with no problem, the tun is only about 1/3rd full. I am planning a 15 lt batch soon and I believe I can do a 20 lt batch. the main problem is sparging as this will need three rounds of batch sparging.

Cheers
Gavo.

 

[underback]

I've been mashing in a 15 litre for years, it's tight, but entirely possible. I do have a 55 litre box shaped cooler for mashing, but find I prefer the cylindrical 15 litre.

Best to fly sparge unless you want to do several batch spargings, keep your mash thickness at around 2.2 litres to the kilo, and be accurate with your strike water temperature (as there's not much room for error). You won't be able to do a mashout step by infusion but that isn't the end of the world. Pushing it, you can use up to 5kg's of grain which should yield around 1.050+ starting gravity if efficiency is good.

You can always add some dry malt or sugars if wanting to boost things.

Cheers

 

[buttersd70]

If you have a look at the 'can I mash it' here then you can see what would fit in it...so for a 1049 @ 70% efficiency, you would be able to mash the 4.5kg of grain required at 2.5L/kg, and it would take up 14.27L of space...however, that doesn't account for deadspace, you would not be able to mash out, and you would need to sparge in rounds - probably 4 rounds. So the upshot of it is, yes you can, but it would be a complete PITA.

edit. beaten by underback. agree that for small container, fly sparging would be the way to go....then you only have to worry about fitting the mash itself in.

 

[Gavo]

Here is my 15 lt Mash Tun with 1.8 kg of grain to give you an idea.



Would have uploaded them earlier but the brain wasn't working to capacity. :lol:

Cheers
Gavo.

Edit: second partial hit 70%, an improvement from the last.