Whole grain brewing

yegnal

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Making 3 gallon batches, 5 gallon pot and mash tun. I heat 4-5 gals in the brew pot and use it for strike and sparge water. Problem is the plastic bucket I drained the mash into appeared deformed by the heat, worried that it could fail and/or hot melting plastic may not be the best thing to contact wort.

Do I need to boil in another 5 gal pot ? I'm thinking about scaling up to larger brew batches and think it may be excessive to need two 40gt pots..

Wondering what the common practice is ?
 
The wort should not deform your fermenter bucket, especially when you need to cool down the wort to an apropriate pitch temp. Even the cheapest plastic does not defrom at 20C.
 
Going into the fermenter is fine, it's the hot wort coming out of the mash tun that needs a place to go because my brew pot is holding the hot sparge water so I can't drain into the brew pot unless I employ another pot. I was also thinking that using another pot may be excessive or even cost prohibitive especially if i decide one day to do larger batches... Was wondering what common practice is...
 
If it were me, I would BIAB (brew in a bag), let the wort cool right there in the kettle. 3 gallon batches in a 5 gallon kettle works just fine.
 
What sort of plastic bucket are you using. Food safe plastic shouldn't deform at temps below 170F. I'd look at that first. If it's deforming, it may not be the type of bucket you want to use at all. Since it's first runnings that you're draining, I don't see why you'd need a 5 gallon vessel to collect it and for that matter you don't need both the strike and sparge water at the same time. I have a 7.5 gallon pot for mashing, and an 8 gallon pot for boil. I heat water in a smaller 4 gallon pot and use that for strike and infusion and then heat sparge water while the mash is finishing up. When That way I can start draining into the brew pot as soon as I need to since it's not in use. In your case with smaller batches, an inexpensive stock pot, even an aluminum one would be fine for heating sparge water. I'd look into that.
 
Making 3 gallon batches, 5 gallon pot and mash tun. I heat 4-5 gals in the brew pot and use it for strike and sparge water. Problem is the plastic bucket I drained the mash into appeared deformed by the heat, worried that it could fail and/or hot melting plastic may not be the best thing to contact wort.

Do I need to boil in another 5 gal pot ? I'm thinking about scaling up to larger brew batches and think it may be excessive to need two 40gt pots..

Wondering what the common practice is ?

I had same problem having only one pot, then I found a 3 gallon cooler in cupboard, now i put the sparge water in the cooler, until i need it, freeing up my pot. Mine has a nice spigot I can open and it does the sparging for me. But any 2-3 gal cooler should work , you don't need much sparge water with 3 gal batches.
 
Yep dont want hot wort in cheep chemical leaching plastic. HDPE for hot wort ask the no chill fellas;).
 
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Yes to the HDPE. My Buckets are HDPE and will happily take several gallons of freshly boiled wort, they don't even get soft.
 
Yes to the HDPE. My Buckets are HDPE and will happily take several gallons of freshly boiled wort, they don't even get soft.
Just be very very careful not to ever scratch them, or they will become storage buckets. ;)
 
My HDPE buckets have a duct tape label on the outside indicating to only use them for water and wort. Assuming no one ignores that I should be good for a while. My cheap Canadian Tire buckets get used for everything else.
 

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