Need to Upgrade

[lmd]

Current Equipment:
8 gallon megapot
5 galloin mash tun
i do full boil all grain on a stove - my problem is that I cant do "big" beers because the mash tun is too small.

Looking to upgrade - 10 gallon igloos mash tun, 10 gallon nb megapot with ball valve as my kettle and a bayou classic burner to start brewing outdoors.

Am I missing anything? I am going to stick to 5 gallon batches. Do I need a pump?

Thanks fo rthe feedback

 

[Pappers_]

I have a similar setup and don't use a pump, fwiw

 

[Gduck]

I did 5 gallon batches with similar stuff to what you are upgrading to for years without a pump. I do use a pump now and it doesn't really shave any time off (setting up and cleaning of it take up any time saved by transferring liquid more quickly). I mainly got one to take the stress off my back - got tired of being sore all night after lifting things filled with water. Of course I could have accomplished the same thing by building a brewstand so everything could easily flow by gravity. That's the long answer I suppose.

Short answer, nah, you can get by just fine without a pump.

 

[lmd]

The question is - what am I going to do with my old equipment. Is it easy to drill a hole in the 8 gallon megapot and make it a hlt? Any use for a 5 gallon cooler?

 

[doc5md]

The 8 gallon pot you can just hold on to, you never know when you might need a big pot. Drilling holes is easy if you decide to do so.
I'd keep the 5 gallon cooler and use it for when you are brewing session beers. The 10gal cooler will lose more heat with the small grain bill.
You will love moving to a 10gal boil kettle. Doing 7-7.5 gal boils in my old 8 gallon kettle was very annoying.

 

[lmd]

does a brew kettle need a ball valve and a thermometer or just the ball valve

 

[forstmeister]

does a brew kettle need a ball valve and a thermometer or just the ball valve

Your kettle doesn't need either one, they are convenient to have but not necessary.

 

[doc5md]

I like the ball valve on the kettle now that I have one, but I brewed a lot of batches without one.
I didn't put a thermometer in my boil kettle.. You don't really need it, but I'm sort of wishing I had one just to watch the temp come down with chilling. as it is now, I keep spot checking with my thermapen.
As an aside... I really like having a sight glass on both my brew kttle and my HLT. handy thing for volume management. That said, I realize a marked stick will do the same thing!

 

[atreid]

If you have an 8 gals kettle, upgrade at least to 12-13, even 15... otherwise it's not worth it.... youll regret it soon enough...

 

[fmr_army]

I heat all my water at the same time, put strike into the MLT and put the sparge water into my 5 gallon cooler. That frees up my boil kettle for use collecting the runnings.

I love my kettle with ball valve.

 

[eastoak]

Your kettle doesn't need either one, they are convenient to have but not necessary.

i would say that a ball valve is a little more than convenient.

 

[divrguy]

If you have an 8 gals kettle, upgrade at least to 12-13, even 15... otherwise it's not worth it.... youll regret it soon enough...

I totally agree! I now have a 5 10 and 15. Got rid of the 8. Initial upgrade from 8 was 10 and soon after wished I had gone for the 15. Now I use the 15 all the time.

 

[forstmeister]

i would say that a ball valve is a little more than convenient.

Not at all. I brewed for 3 years without one. An auto siphon, on the other hand, is a necessity.

 

[atreid]

Not at all. I brewed for 3 years without one. An auto siphon, on the other hand, is a necessity.

You can't use a plastic siphon for hot liquid (had a plate chiller... I guess it's less of an issue with an immersion chiller)

I would sacrifice a lot before my kettle valve... A stainless steel valve costs 15$... With the additional weldless fittings, it might get to 30-35$...

 

[eastoak]

Not at all. I brewed for 3 years without one. An auto siphon, on the other hand, is a necessity.

i see your point, i brewed without ball valves for a while too, but i would never go back to brewing without one. or three in my case. without ball valves it would be much harder to brew on my brew stand using keggles. if i was brewing 2-3 gallon extract batches on a stove top it would be feasible, 10 gallons on a top tier would not be as fun.

 

[DoWBrewer]

You could just add DME if you want to make high gravity beers. You can still do regular all-grain batch and then add LME/DME to make up the extra gravity.

I agree with atried, if you are upgrading go to 15 gallons. I would also buy a turkey burner and move outside. Upgrading to 10-gallon batches is a pretty big change. You cannot easily lift your pot, so you probably need a ball valve and a powerful heat exchanger for cooling. Unless you have large fermenters, you need to split batches between two fermenters.

 

[lmd]

After reading the posts, I think I am going to go with a 10 gallon ss with ball valve and convert my 8 gallon ss to heat sparge water and use the 5 gallon mash tun as the hlt.