BenitoBlanco
New Member
Hello all,
First time poster, long time lurker! I come to you guys with a couple questions that I'm sure experience with Blichmann Boilermakers (that I know many of you have) could answer.
My birthday was Thursday and as a gift (unbeknownst to me), my girlfriend got me a 20 gallon Boilermaker. This of course is AWESOME, but I have one lingering doubt...
I am an all-grain brewer and I currently use a 15 gallon Megapot for 5-6 gal batches. I'm definitely not against the idea of brewing larger batches in the future, it's just not something that I find myself doing right now.
The difference in cost between the 15 gal and 20 gal Boilermakers is about $35, so that's not a point of contention here for me at all.
I use BeerSmith 2 for calculating most of my recipes.
I've been doing research since Thursday and the only real downfalls of keeping the 20 gal I can think of are:
- Brewmometer too high on pot to read temp under 7-8 gallons (from what I understand the 15 gal isn't much better in this regard, and I was considering using a copper gauge wire wrapped around the probe to extend it a little farther down)
- Boil-off rate (which is very high on my current 15 gal Megapot and I account for it now so I don't really see this as an issue)
- My 50' immersion wort chiller being less effective due to less contact between coils and wort (it won't kill me to wait a bit longer to chill my wort, if that's the only issue)
- Break material/wort amounts left in the bottom of the kettle. As it stands now with my 15 gal Megapot, it seems like I do end up leaving a pretty good amount of trub/break material/beer behind, simply because once it gets to a certain level left my auto-siphon won't bring any more into my carboy. I'm concerned that the width of the kettle may have something to do with this. I know that I can adjust for this in Beersmith, I just haven't nailed it down 100% yet.
So the question comes down to this...
- Do I exchange my 20 gal for a 15?
- For those of you using 20 gal Boilermakers to brew 5-6 gal batches, are you running into any issues?
- Do my potential concerns listed above warrant me exchanging for the 15 gal?
Thank you guys for reading! Cheers!
First time poster, long time lurker! I come to you guys with a couple questions that I'm sure experience with Blichmann Boilermakers (that I know many of you have) could answer.
My birthday was Thursday and as a gift (unbeknownst to me), my girlfriend got me a 20 gallon Boilermaker. This of course is AWESOME, but I have one lingering doubt...
I am an all-grain brewer and I currently use a 15 gallon Megapot for 5-6 gal batches. I'm definitely not against the idea of brewing larger batches in the future, it's just not something that I find myself doing right now.
The difference in cost between the 15 gal and 20 gal Boilermakers is about $35, so that's not a point of contention here for me at all.
I use BeerSmith 2 for calculating most of my recipes.
I've been doing research since Thursday and the only real downfalls of keeping the 20 gal I can think of are:
- Brewmometer too high on pot to read temp under 7-8 gallons (from what I understand the 15 gal isn't much better in this regard, and I was considering using a copper gauge wire wrapped around the probe to extend it a little farther down)
- Boil-off rate (which is very high on my current 15 gal Megapot and I account for it now so I don't really see this as an issue)
- My 50' immersion wort chiller being less effective due to less contact between coils and wort (it won't kill me to wait a bit longer to chill my wort, if that's the only issue)
- Break material/wort amounts left in the bottom of the kettle. As it stands now with my 15 gal Megapot, it seems like I do end up leaving a pretty good amount of trub/break material/beer behind, simply because once it gets to a certain level left my auto-siphon won't bring any more into my carboy. I'm concerned that the width of the kettle may have something to do with this. I know that I can adjust for this in Beersmith, I just haven't nailed it down 100% yet.
So the question comes down to this...
- Do I exchange my 20 gal for a 15?
- For those of you using 20 gal Boilermakers to brew 5-6 gal batches, are you running into any issues?
- Do my potential concerns listed above warrant me exchanging for the 15 gal?
Thank you guys for reading! Cheers!