Was online looking for the best place to buy a cooler for my MLT. Walmart sells 10 gallon Rubbermaid coolers for $45 bucks. That is a hard deal to pass up. The best part about this is you can do the free site to store pick up. Sure beats paying $75-$90 for the same cooler anywhere else. Just thought everyone would like to know
Look for Coleman Xtreme 52qt. Good for 5 gallon batches. I use a 36qt Coleman Xtreme, got it for $40 on Amazon. Don’t give your money to Wal-Mart.
Words to live by. I also try not to give my money to Amazon. 
Home Depot has the round Rubbermaid 10g cooler for $44.87 normal price as well. Get a kettle you can heat as your HLT, not a cooler.
Kmart has the 52qt Coleman xtreme for $33.24 (down from their regular price of $34.99). I’ve seen them go down to $29 earlier in the season @ both Sears and Kmart.
Shop around.
I too would use a pot I could heat for a HLT.
I advise getting a rectangular, not round, cooler. You get more capacity for your money that way. I’ve built a few mashtuns to sell in the last couple weeks, and I’m paying $36 for a 70 qt. Coleman Extreme cooler. Then to set it up and use it, see www.dennybrew.com
I have been reading a lot about the different coolers to use for my MLT. I think I am gonna go with a rectangular cooler and use the 5 gallon round cooler as my HLT. Maybe one day when I am rich and famous (i.e. not having three small expensive children) I will go with keggles for everything. Just happy to finally be getting into all grain. I have a question. For any of you who use keggles, I made one myself. Do you guys cool the wort in it or do you transfer it out of the kettle and then use a wort chiller. It just seems like the keg would take a while to cool down. Unless you use a hose or something to spray the outside of it down to cool it off.
I use my IM in the (keg) kettle. I assure you, you don’t want to have to deal with xferring just boiled wort!
I brew in my kitchen on a gas stove, so rather than one large kettle, I use two smaller ones. Before I chill, I move my wort to my fermenter (Ale Pail), which is lined with a paint strainer bag. So I’m only moving something less than 3 gal at a time; not ideal but better than over 5 gal at a time. I figure that my cooling has to be a bit more efficient for not having to cool the thermal mass of the kettles and the hot trub.
OTOH, you risk HSA by xferring wort over 180F.
GASP! Not HSA!!!
I’d be worried about hot plastic leaching.
Yeah, it CAN happen…personal experience.
cool! that may be the first I have heard. I have not noticed it but there could be other explanations for that. I only have one kettle large enough to heat the sparge water for a 11 gallon batch so when I sparge I run off first runnings into buckets and then pour them into the kettle to boil. But I guess that is pre-boil and the risks would be mitigated by the boil driving off o2.
True, but I’ve never experienced it; lesser of the evils, I guess.
So if I went for a rectangular cooler for my MLT what size is recommended. Don’t know how often I would be doing high gravity beers, but I definitely know that I will vary quite a bit in the size batches I will be doing. Five to ten gallon batches that is.
I have a 72 qt coleman extreme. I have made 11 gallon batches of ‘normal’ gravity (around 1.050-1.060) with it and was able to do mostly no sparge (I had to run off a small part of the first runnings before I had room or the last gallon or so of sparge water) I can do a 1.100+ beast at a 5 gallon batch but it’s pretty full (partigyle so no sparge again)
I have 48, 70, and 152 qt. mash tuns. If I was going to only have one, it would be the 70.
Hey thanks guys for all the good info. Think I am gonna go with the Coleman Xtreeme 70 qt. looking forward to getting back from Afghanistan for the big brew day! Have a bunch of cool stuff to set it all up and running. Can’t wait to try out the Blichmann burner I got. When I used my stove before I left it took forever to brew
FWIW, I had a round HD Rubbermaid cooler deform a bit when using it as an HLT with a heat stick; it’s still functional, but it has a bulge on the inside wall now, so I stopped using it for that purpose anymore. Even 5 gallon buckets seem to hold up better for HLT’s using heatsticks.