I’m planning on converting to AG in the next couple of weeks so tonight I bought a 48qt rubbermaid rectangular cooler. I put in about 1.5 to 2 gals of 165 degree water to see how much heat it would lose over 1 hour. I put a blanket over the cooler to try and minimize the heat loss through the lid.
Shockingly, the temp dropped ~20 degrees in an hour. Is this simply because the cooler was mostly empty or is this cooler just not going to cut it? After an initial drop of 5 or 6 degrees in the first 15 minutes (which I expected), the temp kept dropping.
Maybe lissener’s reaction to the OP was the same as mine, which was something along the lines of “WTF is a ‘mash tun’?” What does “converting to AG” mean?
It would have been nice if you could have given us enough context so that at least we’d know we weren’t supposed to understand what you were talking about.
The Rubbermaid will do just fine. You had too little water and too much air in there for an accurate test. With the inside filled with barley and hot water, the temperature will stay just where you need it for as long as you need to mash. Rubbermaid products also seems to keep their integrity better than some others when subjected to high temperatures.
Thanks for the clarification. I considered adding clarifying comments, but thought the title would attract the attention of anyone who understood it. For anyone that didn’t understand it, they probably wouldn’t be able to help much so trying to explain wouldn’t do much good.
I wasn’t sure if lissener was saying I am being ignorant (i.e., the reason for the heat loss is as obvious as concluding cat breath smells like cat food) or if she was saying what you indicated.
Zebra - This is really just about the heat loss properties of a cooler. Adding the context of why I was wondering about the properties I thought would be helpful.
