Any benefit to using two mash tun coolers?

[galacticbrewing12]

I have been reading about the differences of using just one cooler versus two coolers for all grain brewing and was interested to hear what people's opinions were. From what I can tell you can mash and lauter within one cooler or you can mash within one cooler and then transfer to another cooler to lauter. My thought is if you can do it in one why take the risk of heat loss in transfering it to another cooler before siphoning off the wort.

 

[tally350z]

Lots of people use one cooler to mash in and then use another cooler for their HLT. This might be what you are referring too

 

[Bobby_M]

Right, I don't think anyone transfer to a dedicated lauter tun and if they did, there's really no reason that it would be a cooler. A second cooler would be an HLT that holds the sparge water in a single kettle/burner fly sparging setup to keep the water hot over a 45 minute + sparge. If you batch sparge, you could use a bucket for a similar purpose because it doesn't have to hold heat.

 

[mikescooling]

Hi, A MLT or Mash Lauter Tun is is where the grain/starch is separated and converted into sugary wart. The HLT or Hot Liquor Tank is just hot water for washing the grains in the MLT. I did the cooler thing and still have them and use them for other stuff now, but the hot water takes a toll on the coolers, the inside buckles from the heat. The ball valves cost about $40 each and each cooler cost about the same. If I could go back in time I would save the $160 +12% Chicago tax and just buy a MLT with a valve or make one out of a keg.

 

[inhousebrew]

It looks like your intuition was correct and you were just a little confused on the process.

 

[galacticbrewing12]

Thanks for the feedback. I think what I have decided is that I will just use one 5 gallon cooler. I actually found one that not only has a braided manifold along with a sparge under the top of the cooler. There is no difference in price of getting a 5 gallon cooler with the sparge or without, so I figured I can either do a batch sparge or fly sparge.

 

[Denny]

My advice is to go bigger than 5 gal. You will run into limitations with something that small. I also prefer rectangular coolers. The opening is larger so it's easier to stir and you get more capacity for your money.

 

[revco]

I helped some friends brew on a system sort of like this here a few weeks ago and it was thoroughly an interesting experience. It was a pro brewer's test system, believe it or not. We mashed in one vessel then transferred the whole mash to another for lautering. (i.e. separate mash and lauter tun) It was particularly difficult, mostly because the 1.5" triclamp drain became stuck halfway through the mash transfer, but we eventually got it figured out.

I can't say as I saw any major advantages to the system and personally prefer a single MLT due to the ease of not having to transfer the mash. A two cooler system (MLT and HLT) is certainly a pretty standard AG approach, but there's advantages to having an HLT that you can direct fire. You can get away with one burner, so long as you don't expect to heat your HLT and BK at the same time in your process.

 

[dzlater]

The pros do this so as soon as they are done transferring the mash to the lauter tun they can start a new mash for another batch.