Beer Forum

I have a 5g Igloo cooler for a mash tun, so I usually can't fit all my grain in for mashing. I've gone from one extreme, which was on brewday reading the recipe and wondering how 11lbs of grain and 4g of water were going to fit, to the other, which is mashing 1lb of grain and adding tons of extract. The solution, I believe, will be in the middle.

So, I have a recipe that calls for 12.75 lbs of grain. I want to maximize the grain portion and minimize the extract (liquid) portion. The base malts are 9lb Belgian Pils and 3lb German Wheat. The amount I can fit also varies on the grain to water ratio in the wort which I usually do about 1.25 to 1.5 lb per quart (if I remember right).

Given all this fancy pants math, I come up with this:

The full recipe calls for 12.75 * 1.25 quarts of water about 16q = 4g.
However, I'm thinking that 12.75 lb of grain has more volume than 1g which means I can't fit it all in the Igloo.

My best guess is this for the recipe:

.75 specialty grains in the mash (unchanged)
6 lbs belgian pils malt (grain)
2 lbs german wheat malt (grain)
Liquid malt substitute for 3 lbs belgian malt (added during boil)
Liquid malt substitute for 1 lb wheat malt (added during boil)

This reduces my volume by about 1.25 gallons for liquid only and also reduces the volume of 4 lbs of grain.

Anyway, if there's a short answer, what's the approximate volume of 1lb of crushed grain?

Uncrushed malted barley is about .75L/# dry. Malted wheat is about .65L/# dry. some of your water will soak into the grain, though, so adding that volume won't be accurate.

You could go to Green Bay Rackers and use their nifty "can I mash it" calculator. that tells me that 12.75# of grain at 1.25qts/lb is exactly 5 gallons. Whether that fits in your cooler or not is an experiment for you. I've found that all my coolers and kettles actually hold somewhat less than their supposed capacity.

I'd go to Home Depot or Wal-mart and find a 48 qt rectangle cooler and build a new mash tun. I've got a 54 qt cooler from HD for $15. Then you'd have enough room to mash and lauter. Just an opinion. Just check around and you'll be amazed at some of the deals out there, especially when summer's coming. Good luck and cheers!

Thanks for the input. I think I will cut 2lbs of grain and use the .75 lbs liquid extract to 1 lbs grain formula and I think it should taste spot on. A new cooler is in my future, but not for now.

mfischer2 wrote:Thanks for the input. I think I will cut 2lbs of grain and use the .75 lbs liquid extract to 1 lbs grain formula and I think it should taste spot on. A new cooler is in my future, but not for now.

Or just cut back on the water, add more to the sparge to make up for it.

Cut it to 1.15 qts/# and you'll have a leftover headspace of 1.275 gallons