Can’t wait! I just ordered a 70 qt coleman xtreme cooler to upgrade my mash tun. I’ve been using a 10 gallon round cooler for years now with reasonable success but have always had problems getting the efficiency up as high as I’d like. I think a big part of the problem is that I end up leaving too much of the wort in the bottom of my tun when I drain it off. I really like the channel in the bottom of coleman cooler that lets everything drain out instead of leaving a bunch of wort behind. Plus I love all the extra space I’m going to have for making really big beers :
Nice. You’ll really like the 70 qt xtreme. You’ll still leave some wort behind though. Not as much but there’s still room beneath the drain. It helps if you prop up the back end of the cooler before you start the vorlauf. I use a little ceramic flower pot that used to belong to my wife. She was going to reclaim it until I told her it was now part of my brewing system. I’ll leave it to your imagination the look I got for that one.
You’ve probably already seen it but this is the site I followed when I converted mine:
http://brewing.lustreking.com/gear/mashtun.html
And it is really nice to have all that room in the mash tun for the bigguns.
The 70QE ROCKS! Very, very little is left behind.
You should be very happy with the new addition. I have a 58qt Ultimate Extreme that works like a charm. 
36 qt Extreme here and it works absolutely great. You’ll love yours.
I’ve had mine about two years now? Anyway there’s practically no deadspace at all. And I just shoved the tubing through the existing drain. That’s particular to my setup and it doesn’t leak. Discovered this feature when installing a ball-valve.
Honestly I think the Coleman Extreme keeps things cold better than warm because I get a good 4 degree temp drop in a 60 minute mash. However, to me that isn’t a big deal and I still think it makes a great tun. Mine doubles as a cooler and it’ll keep stuff frozen for days.
Heat should move the same either way, but for what it’s worth there are two main things in play. You’ve got a mash at ~150F and an ambient that is somewhere around what, 70F? 80F? It’s the temperature differential that makes a difference there. Plus, because of the phase transition, it takes more energy moving across the barrier to move ice at 31F to water at 33F than it takes to move water from 150F to water at 148F.
I still haven’t bothered to make a mash tun out of my 70qt Xtreme, the keggle with false bottom is working just fine. I might try it though, for a really big mash some time. Right now it is a cooler
I’ve got a 36 and a 54 qt CE, both have performed exceptionally.
You must not have the Blue one then ;)
I have the same setup the tygo referenced above. On my last beer, I inadvertantly upped my water to grain ration to 1.7 qts per pound and got 80% efficiency. May have been a fluke and I generally don’t like to go this high on the ratio. I’m going to try it again at 1.5 q/lb and see what I get ( normally I do 1.33 )
Don’t worry about it. Anything up to about 2 qt/lb is fine.
I think this will be my next brewing upgrade! I currently use a 10 gallon Rubbermaid, and it works pretty good, but someday I’m sure I’ll want to do 10 gallon batches, and this cooler would be a good choice. Thanks for the link tygo.
I’ve got my new 70 qt extreme in teh back seat of my car. going to the hardware store this weekend to get the rest of the stuff to convert it per the link from tygo. And yes it’s the blue one.
I’ll be sad to retire the rubbermaid but am also thinking of 10 gallon batches which will be a lot easier with the 70 qt xtreme. That being said, I was able to do a 10 gallon batch of 1.10+ braggot using the trusty 10 gallon round rubbermaid. Boy, that was one full mashtun!
I just got my order from Amazon ($40 with free shipping!) and put it together tonight! Leak testing it now, everything looks great! Can’t wait to use it for a Begian Quadrupel this weekend. Getting the 20 pounds of grain into and out of this should be a lot easier than the round rubbermaid. I think the hosebraid should help me get a much better runoff than the bazzooka screen I’ve been using too.
Best of all…Its a blue one :
Since you got the blue one, make sure you adjust your recipe to compensate for the 110% efficiency you’re going to get. The blue goes up to 11!
David St. Hubbins approves of blue coolers!
If I can offer some advice on the conversion. You will want to use a longer pipe nipple than the one in the lustreking link. I think it’s 1.5". Also, I would suggest using the white gasket on the coleman xtreme cooler rather than a red silicone ring. I have never had the red rings seal well on this brand of cooler. The white gasket on the coleman, however, works like a charm.
Good luck!
I’d suggest not using a bulkhead at all and simply running apiece of tubing through the cooler wall like I do. I’ve found that, at least with my cooler, it works far better than a bulkhead.
what do you use to keep it from draining while mashing? do you just raise the end above the liquid level? a hose clamp?
I go for the ultimate in simplicity and just raise the end above the liquid. Cooler handle works perfectly for holding it up.