An advantage of using a rectangle cooler over a round one is they are cheaper. Even cheaper are the ones without spigots. Would drilling a hole in the side of one of the spigot less ones work?
That’s what I did. Just make sure you pick a spot that’s flat enough for a gasket to seal it.
Good to know. I’ve seen some coolers without the spigot that still have an indented spot where the spigot would go if it had one; may try one of those.
Got a BiMart nearby? I found the 70 qt. Coleman Extreme at one here for about $32.
There’s got to be one somewhere around here, although 70 qt. is way bigger than I need. I’m wanting to go from 5 gallon size to 10 so I can brew stronger batches, and the occasional larger batch, without having to use extracts.
70qt is perfect for 10gallon batches. Can mash about 35lbs.
That’s exactly why I got the 70 qt. The 48 qt. is great for 5 gal. batches up to about 1.080 gravity. The 70 qt. can easily do that and bigger, stronger batches if I want to.
I normally do 3 gallon batches with the occasional 4 or 5 gallon batch, so the smaller one would better fit my needs.
I used a 50 qt Igloo Cube for that reason, but that was almost a decade ago so I don’t know what’s currently on the market. FWIW, 50 qt lets me mash any 6 gal batch and an 11 gal batch up to ~1.070 OG.
I just thought of another issue: while a large cooler/mashtun would work great for larger and/or stronger batches that I do once in awhile, most of the recipes I do regularly only use 5-8 pounds of grain which would make for a really shallow grain bed.
If you batch sparge, that shouldn’t matter. Unless the grain bed is so shallow that it’s below the braid or whatever lauter system you use.
Good to know.
I did a batch sparge on the maibock I brewed last month with grain milled at my LHBS and got the same O G I would’ve gotten by fly sparging. I’m going to do my next brew with a batch sparge after milling the grains at home and if the results are similar I’ll probably go to batch sparging all the time, which also eliminates the need for a sparge water tank.