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Mash Volume Needed?

R. Gibson

Master Brewer
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Jul 20, 2011
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I have been all-grain brewing 5-gallon batches now for about 5 years...which has been sufficient for my own consumption, but my friends are starting to get thirstier, and I plan on brewing 10 gallons at a time in the near future. I currently use a 15 gallon boil kettle and a 10 gallon drink cooler for my mash tun (I've been intending to ramp up my batch sizes for the last few years...)

Anyway, according to BeerSmith, if I simply scale up my recipes to 10 gallons, I need nearly 15 gallons of mash volume...even if I manually set my grain/water ratio to 1:1 in the Mash In window. This particular recipe has about 24 pounds of grain in it, for the 10 gallon batch.

Now, when I go to MoreBeer's website and look at their 10 gallon cooler system, they state that they can easily get 30 pounds of grain into a 10 gallon cooler at a ratio of 1:1...so I'm wondering who is right? If MoreBeer is right, why is BS wrong?..or should I say, which SETTING is wrong?  ???
 
Okay, duh I feel stupid now.  ::)

After playing with it for a bit, I realized that the mash-out water is what was putting it over the top. If I simply do a single-infusion mash, with no mash out, and a 1:1 ratio, it only takes about 8 gallons...which leaves a fair bit of head-space at the top of the 10 gallon mash tun.
 
The Green Bay Rackers have a helpful tool called "Can I mash it" that could help you wiht this too.
 
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