So I've decided to do a partial mash for my next beer, which will be my first time using more than a few ounces of grains; I have four pounds of grains for this one. I don't yet have any all-grain equipment, so I'm looking for suggestions on how to get away with my mash and sparge with as little stuff as possible. I'll almost certainly be obtaining a turkey friar before the brew, and I have a large cylindrical cooler handy.

I've been basing a lot of my plans on the following site which describes an incredibly inefficient but easy 3-gallon all-grain brew:
http://www.classiccitybrew.com/homebrew.html
The basic rundown is that they scale the amount of grains to a 3.6 gallon batch, but only make 3 gallons. This is to make up for a low efficiency sparge, which is simply to put the grains, a bit at a time, in a strainer and pour the sparging water over them into the brew pot.

I bought my ingredients such that I'm set to be just over my target OG, but not so much as recommended in that article--I think I can manage a bit better efficiency, especially since I'll be needing a higher water to grain ratio due to my partial mashing (I can double up the sparging process they describe if nothing else).

I've also been considering tying my grains off in a large nylon straining bag (which I originally used for my blackberries in a wine). The grains should all fit in the bag, but it might be a bit of a hassle to make sure they all get soaked in the mash water, and the sparge would be even worse.

As for the mashing itself, I'm not sure if I should mash in my brewpot on the turkey fryer so I can control the temperature better or in the cooler so I have my brewpot handy to heat more water.

That website mentions boiling and then cooling the sparge water...is there any particular reason for this? I can't think of anything.

Does anybody have concerns with any of these processes, or have any other suggestions? Is there some piece of equipment that I really shouldn't do without?

Oh, and one last thing. I held off on getting the yeast in the hopes that I could use something from our yeast bank. Do I remember correctly that a California Ale yeast was available?

Thank you!

_________________
"Prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into."
-Don Marquis

"A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her."
-W.C. Fields

Ben, I have a 5gl Rubbermaid cooler that I batch sparge in when I am brewing smaller batches of beer (< 5gl) that you would be welcome to borrow. I built a round manifold (Palmer's How to Brew) out of stainless braid that I have just recently used and got approx 85% efficiency out of the mash. This should give you plenty of room to mash at whatever grain/water ration you might want to use.

If you're interested just send me a pm

I've got some pacman yeast I can hook you up with, it's awesome yeast and I've brewed everything from imperial ipa's to pale ale's with it.

_________________
On Tap:
Big Hairy Beaver RIS
Chocolate Vanilla Cream Stout
Double Dog Clone
Double IPA
2 Hearted Clone
666 - A continously hopped IPA at 6.66% ABV
Fresh Hop Harvest Ale
Hoppy Beaver IPA
Bruegala's Best Wheat
White Zinfandel Wine for the ladies

_________________
"Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt." - Mark Twain

sorry to reply so late. hope your first pm went well. i recently did my first pm. i was in the same boat as you with equiptment. i had plenty of pots but for sparging i ended up using two bottle buckets (6.5 gallon buckets) one inside the other. i believe this is the zapap system. it is described in the complete joy of homebrewing by charlie papazian. drill a bunch of holes in the bottom of one bucket and put it inside the other. when done mashing dump the grains into the buckets. it is best to prefill the buckets with water so when dumping the grains in the wort does not drain out immediately into the dead space between the buckets. then you can sparge over top and let the wort drain out the spigot. it worked great for me. i did not measure my efficiency so i cannot comment on that. the beer turned out well though. it was a dubbel partial mash kit from midwest.

moody

I managed well enough with my large nylon bag. Unfortunately the bag was sacrificed in the attempt (ripped up in several places despite my efforts to not abuse it). I came out a bit under my target gravity, but I'm happy with the results so far. The yeast either beat their way through the wort in less than two days or they didn't get going well. I assume it's the former, as the yeast seemed quite healthy enough prior to pitching, and the wort was as mentioned lacking in fermentables.

I was a bit disappointed in the performance of my wort chiller though. I was anticipating faster results. I think I'll probably double up on my cooling efforts next time, using both the chiller and an ice bath.

Anyway, I'm in Madison until Sunday, and I'll be racking into secondary hopefully that evening, as well as trying my hand at dry hopping.

_________________
"Prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into."
-Don Marquis

"A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her."
-W.C. Fields

Dude the pacman will blow your mind with it's speed!

_________________
On Tap:
Big Hairy Beaver RIS
Chocolate Vanilla Cream Stout
Double Dog Clone
Double IPA
2 Hearted Clone
666 - A continously hopped IPA at 6.66% ABV
Fresh Hop Harvest Ale
Hoppy Beaver IPA
Bruegala's Best Wheat
White Zinfandel Wine for the ladies

Dude the pacman will blow your mind with it's speed!

_________________
On Tap:
Big Hairy Beaver RIS
Chocolate Vanilla Cream Stout
Double Dog Clone
Double IPA
2 Hearted Clone
666 - A continously hopped IPA at 6.66% ABV
Fresh Hop Harvest Ale
Hoppy Beaver IPA
Bruegala's Best Wheat
White Zinfandel Wine for the ladies