Big beer strategy w/o a huge mash tun

[PhillyBrewer]

I'm not positive what size cooler I have as a mash tun (I think it's 70 quarts), but the maximum amount of grain I can fit into my mash tun is in the low 20s (lbs) or so with a grist ratio of 1.20-1.35 qts/lb. When I want to make a big beer (1.075+), this poses a problem. I end up having to use a lower grist ratio, something close to 1.0 qts/lb. Every time I've made a big beer and had to use a lower grist ratio, my OG has been much lower than I've wanted (eg. anticipated OG of 1.103, but I ended up getting 1.080). After speaking with a guy at my LHBS who makes big beers often, he said he had the same problem and concluded it's because when the sweet wort is viscous and sugar-y in a big beer, the liquid cannot channel through the grain bed properly when you drain your mash and your extraction suffers. I was trying to think of a solution for this that didn't include buying a 100+ qt cooler. I came up with this...

My mash tun has a steel braid. I batch sparge and use a spreadsheet calculator I found years ago that tells me my water volumes, temps, etc. You put in the grain bill, batch size, and desired mash temp, and you get volumes and temps of strike, mash out, and sparge water. The basis of the calculator (and batch sparging in general AFAIK) is that the volume you get out of your mash (plus mash out) should equal your sparge volume. I have another cooler (not a mash tun) that is 60-70 quarts. What I was thinking was to split my grain between the two coolers, mash simultaneously at ~1.3 qts/lb, mash out, and not sparge. Since my second cooler is just a cooler and not a mash tun, I'll drain the mash in the mash tun, discard the grain, then pour the entire contents of the cooler into the mash tun, and drain.

So effectively, I'm using a no sparge with two coolers and half the grain to allow me to use the normal/higher grist ratio that I want. I don't think this is a novel idea as I've read about no sparging before, but I've never read about no sparge with multiple tuns specifically to keep a grist ratio.

Thoughts? Comments?

[Smelletor]

Sounds like a good plan to me. You might be able to sparge for greater volume with that much tun space, but I guess you'll find out when you take your gravity running off.

[Quin]

It's just harder to get that amount of sugar into solution. Your efficiency typically decrease with a big beer.

I find it best (easiest) to use a high quality malt extract. Formulate your recipe with the amount of grain you comfortable with and add LME after mashing to get up to your desired gravity.

[PhillyBrewer]

Quin: I forgot to make note of that. No doubt just using DME or LME would be easiest. But I have a bunch of grain and no extract.

[Bokonon]

I know this isn't exactly what your looking for, but now is a good time to buy a big cooler for a large mash tun. They have 120 quart coolers at Wal Mart for $55. I'm sure other places will be marking their stuff way down now

[siwelwerd]

Not sure why you think you need a bigger tun. I can get 25 lbs of grain into my 48 qt cooler, which was enough for a 1.106 Wee Heavy a couple weeks ago. If yours is 70 qt, you should be set.

[PhillyBrewer]

I'm pretty sure it's 70 quarts, but I could be wrong. [url="http://theoutdoorworld.com/prodimages/4462l.jpg"]This[/url] is what it looks like. Whatever the size is, only 2_ pounds of grain will fit.

[ajdelange]

The approach I took when asked to host he brewing for my club's 25 th anniverasry (25 years, 25°P) the approach I took was to design the beer without consideration of the capacity of the equipment. It was pretty obvious at that point that we weren't going to get all that grain into my mash tun nor, if we split it up, all that wort into my kettle so we took half the grain and mashed it. As soon as the mash was complete we pumped it to the lauter tun which freed up the mash tun in which we started a second mash with the other half of the grain. Lauter and sparge runnings went into the kettle I normally use for decoctions and was raised to boiling. While it was boiling, the second mash was completed, lautered, and sparged back into the mash tun (which was cleaned of spent grain during vorlauf). This was boiled. Obviously the first kettle boiled well before the second. As the level in it went down it was made up from the first kettle until eventually all the wort was in one kettle. Hops were added and the boil continued. We only got to 24.1°P because a steam trap failed but all thought 24.1°P was pretty good.

So I guess the suggestion is to see if you could borrow a second kettle (and perhaps cajun cooker or something of the sort) from a brew buddy and try something based on the approach I've outlined.