turkey fryer???

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subwyking

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im kinda looking into buying a turkey fryer. it comes with a 30 quart aluminum pot as well. i know some people say aluminum is bad because you can easily burn goodies to the bottom, but other than that does it make any difference to flavor? and also is it good to boil all five gallons as wort if you can versus a 2 or 3 gallon boil then a top off to 5?
 
subwyking said:
and also is it good to boil all five gallons as wort if you can versus a 2 or 3 gallon boil then a top off to 5?
The bigger the boil the better, as far as your beer is concerned. The trouble is that when you go to a 5 gallon boil, you also almost have to step up to a wort chiller too.

As far as aluminum goes...there are a lot of turkey friers now being sold with SS pots for virtually the same cost, so why not go with one of those. Taste concerns aside, SS is much easier to clean than aluminum.
 
im pretty confident in my copper bending and soldering abilities. im pretty sure i could make a wort chiller. how long does it generally take for a chiller to cool a five gallon boil? i dont mind scrubbing a pot if i can save 20-30 bucks. but does the aluminum affect the taste?
 
Definitely go with the full boil once you have the capacity. I also have a 30qt ss pot and I generally try to get 6.5-7g of wort depending on the length of the boil such that I wind up with 5.5g in my pot following the boil, which usually results in 5-5.25g in my fermenter. Note that a 7g boil in a 7.5g pot requires some careful attention when boil first starts and until you've boiled off 1/2g or so!
 
subwyking said:
im pretty confident in my copper bending and soldering abilities. im pretty sure i could make a wort chiller. how long does it generally take for a chiller to cool a five gallon boil? i dont mind scrubbing a pot if i can save 20-30 bucks. but does the aluminum affect the taste?

You shouldn't need to solder anything if you don't want to. I bought a coil of copper pipe, slipped 3/8" ID hose over the ends with hose clamps, and attached a fitting to one of the hoses for connecting a garden hose. Took ~$35 and 15 minutes.

As far as how well it works depends greatly on the temperature of your cold water. I suppose on average I can get to pitching temperature in 20 minutes or so, faster in the winter, slower in the summer.
 
subwyking said:
i noticed that the pot is described as being "Anodized" is this good, bad, or does it not matter?

Anodizing is a surface treatment that can be done to a few metals, the most common of which is aluminum. It makes the surface stronger(up to some small depth, I can't remember how much, but less than a mm), so its definitely a good thing.
 
subwyking said:
ok so sounds like a turkey fryer is a good idea then. i found this one on ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Thermos-30-...411653300QQcategoryZ20724QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

i noticed that the pot is described as being "Anodized" is this good, bad, or does it not matter?

Not exactly a turkey frier expert, but anodized means the surface was finished. for what you are going to be doing, I am not sure that I would want that. For frying, it is probably pretty good, since it would make the pan a little more "no stick" like the inside of a fry daddy. But if you are going to be stirring a boiling wort in that, I would worry about the anodized layer flaking off into your wort. If posible, I would go with an untreated boiler, or preferably, a SS.
 
subwyking said:
ok so sounds like a turkey fryer is a good idea then. i found this one on ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Thermos-30-...411653300QQcategoryZ20724QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

i noticed that the pot is described as being "Anodized" is this good, bad, or does it not matter?
I bought several of those exact fryers for $15 a piece at Target a few months ago and I used mine last Saturday. The anodized aluminum is on the outside of the pot. It works great BUT I have to mention one slight drawback. Don't rush through the assembly of the igniter. All of my friends and I included, used up a lot of battery power shocking ourselves trying to put it together.

Wild
 
subwyking said:
im kinda looking into buying a turkey fryer. it comes with a 30 quart aluminum pot as well. i know some people say aluminum is bad because you can easily burn goodies to the bottom, but other than that does it make any difference to flavor?

I was going the same route when I started. A friend of mine talked me into going with SS because he claimed that the acidic nature of the wort tends to mildly etch the aluminum. He switched to SS after many boils in aluminum because no matter how much he scrubbed the pot afterwards, it never looked clean. If you don't have that hangup, it's probably no big deal. Although Papazian's book recommends SS. I found a 24 quart, professional grade SS pot for $49 at Costco. It has a half inch thick three layer plate welded to the bottom for heat dissipation. I dumped the LME of my last boil into the pot at around 200 degrees and didn't stir it for 30 seconds and it didn't burn it at all. I'd say look around for the SS pot with a thick bottom. I feel it was worth the effort and the price wasn't that bad. Just my two-penny opinion. :D

BeeGee said:
As far as how well it works depends greatly on the temperature of your cold water. I suppose on average I can get to pitching temperature in 20 minutes or so, faster in the winter, slower in the summer.

I found that the flow of the water through the chiller affects the cool-down time quite a bit. Cranking the water flow up doesn't give the water enough time to extract the heat as it passes through (maybe someone versed in thermodynamics can explain). When I turned the flow down to the point that it was just running out of the end without gurgling, the water was much hotter, meaning more heat was coming with it. Takes me about 12 minutes to bring a 3 gallon boil down to 75 degrees with some stirring.
 
I found that the flow of the water through the chiller affects the cool-down time quite a bit. Cranking the water flow up doesn't give the water enough time to extract the heat as it passes through (maybe someone versed in thermodynamics can explain). When I turned the flow down to the point that it was just running out of the end without gurgling, the water was much hotter, meaning more heat was coming with it. Takes me about 12 minutes to bring a 3 gallon boil down to 75 degrees with some stirring.

Two points, 1. Heat transfer depends on the difference between the chiller water's temperature and the wort temperature. Higher flow rates will cool the wort faster. [you really don't want to see the equations] 2. Stirring hot wort can introduce O2 into the wort, causing "Hotside" effects, AKA oxidation. 2a. Stirring cool wort can introduce bacteria.
 
I don't think I have anything to say about turkey fryers other than this post probably belongs in the drunken ramblings area as I enjoy my Wit :drunk: :cross:
Just couldn't resist (yea, I use aluminum).

turkey%20fryer%20dog.jpg
 
david_42 said:
Two points, 1. Heat transfer depends on the difference between the chiller water's temperature and the wort temperature. Higher flow rates will cool the wort faster. [you really don't want to see the equations] 2. Stirring hot wort can introduce O2 into the wort, causing "Hotside" effects, AKA oxidation. 2a. Stirring cool wort can introduce bacteria.

The temp difference makes perfect sense, but the flow thing seems to go against all the info I've seen/been told. But then, there's the old line 'bout believing half of what you read and none of what you hear. I'll submit that there must be a law of diminishing returns relative to the subject and while some increased flow will improve heat transfer, full-on blasting it through there is just wasting water. Is that more accurate? And no... I don't want to see the calcs. I like physics... but I hate math.

Good to know the points of stirring while chilling. I'll just leave the thing alone from now on and try turning the water up a bit. Thanks, David.

On another note... desertBrew, does that recipe include a substitution for cats? :D
 
DrewsBrews said:
On another note... desertBrew, does that recipe include a substitution for cats? :D

Small Yippee ankle biting dogs are best added during the steeping process and only used for brown ales. Cats are a full 60 minute rolling boil and available for most any style of brew.

This guy certainly didn't pay close attention to the recipe. He's going to look like my avatar after taste testing that batch ;)
 
desertBrew said:
Small Yippee ankle biting dogs are best added during the steeping process and only used for brown ales.

I have a small ankle biting dog. a chihuahua. i keep telling my wife im going to sell her (the dog not my wife) to the seedy chinese place down the road. Dinner anyone?
 
subwyking said:
I have a small ankle biting dog. a chihuahua. i keep telling my wife im going to sell her (the dog not my wife) to the seedy chinese place down the road. Dinner anyone?
Chihuahua is better in tex-mex, don't you think? :D
 
subwyking said:
doesnt your chili recipe call for "1/4 cup minced Chihuahua breast" ?
Only if I've had a good day...it takes a whole covey of Chihuahua to get a 1/4 cup of breast meat. :D
 
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