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Skipster

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Last nights brew session sucked:mad: , I attempted to do BM's newcastle clone. This is only my second AG brew so I am still working out the kinks with my new equipment. The mash went well, I improved on my efficiency, above 70%. :rockin:

So up to now things are looking great, I have collected my 6.5 gallons in the brew pot. Problem is with the weather we are having here in the good ol' northwest, (its actually snowing) I was unable to get my wort to a boil after 2 hours of trying. My hand me down burner isnt cutting it. I even tried splitting the boil in half. Half on the stove, half on the burner outside. But the burner outside can't get even that little amount above 180 degrees.

I cooled what was left of the outside half and added that to the fermenter, I did a partial boil with 3 gallons of wort on the stove top. I just treated it like the extract brews I used to do. I am not sure what kind of an effect this is going to have on the finished product. I can tell you one thing, after work I am going to get a burner that "effing" works.

All in all it doesn't look so bad, it was bubbling away this morning. I have abondoned the idea it will be a clone beer, at this point I will settle for a drinkable beer after that fiasco.
 
Bummer Skipster. Where's Global Warming when you need it. :D.

You need to check into getting a new turkey fryer burner ASAP.

$44 gets you this King Cooker from Amazon with free delivery.

41BvdE6eclL._AA280_.jpg
 
If you had the wort up past 160ish, you probably killed off any nasties in it. You might have some chill haze issues due to lack of/inadequate hot-break, but I think taste wise I think you'll be fine. By the way, did you add any hop additions to the outside half? Your utilization might be off if you did. I need to get a burner as well, I'm also doing the two pot dance on my kitchen stove. I usually need to straddle two burners to get the larger pot (~4 gals of wort) up to a boil.
 
reshp1 said:
If you had the wort up past 160ish, you probably killed off any nasties in it. You might have some chill haze issues due to lack of/inadequate hot-break, but I think taste wise I think you'll be fine. By the way, did you add any hop additions to the outside half? Your utilization might be off if you did. I need to get a burner as well, I'm also doing the two pot dance on my kitchen stove. I usually need to straddle two burners to get the larger pot (~4 gals of wort) up to a boil.

I used the hops for the boil on the stove. The AG stuff is completely new, despite the goofs I am having a good time with it.

Side note, I was actually completely happy with extract brewing until I joined this forum. Inside a month I switched to AG.
 
EdWort said:
Bummer Skipster. Where's Global Warming when you need it. :D.

You need to check into getting a new turkey fryer burner ASAP.

$44 gets you this King Cooker from Amazon with free delivery.

41BvdE6eclL._AA280_.jpg

You know the BTU's is something I have never nailed down. I am not sure how many BTU's are sufficient. This one I am using looks just like a banjo burner but it has two of them side by side. I think they are just mounted to far away from the kettle to make any decent heat.
 
I only do PM and extract brews - but even my stove has a hell of a time getting a rolling boil going unless the lid is on the pot. Been thinking of insulating my brew pot, just so I don't use as much energy. Of course, I'm not trying to boil anything off, so the lid is fine for me.

you could insulate your brew pot. In a pinch, you might try wrapping it, and a bit of your cooker, in tin foil - put more of the heat into the pot and less to the atmosphere.

BTW:

1 BTU is the energy to raise 1 pound of water 1 degree F. therefore, if you are trying to boil 5 gallons of 50*F water, you'd need:

5 gallons = 8.34 pounds x 5 = 41.7 lbs

212 *f - 50*F = 162*F

41.7 lbs x 162*F = 6,755 BTU

BUT!! to get the water to actually boil, you need to add 1000 BTU per pound to make the state change from water to gas (look up latent heat and sensible heat on wikipedia) so you'd need something like a 41,700 BTU burner to do that - and make sure ALL of the heat went into the water (which won't happen...)
 
Trance, DON'T boil with the lid on! Driving off DMS (cooked corn/veggie flavors) is one of the most important reasons to boil wort. It's ok to leave the lid on when you're initially trying to get the boil going, but once it's rolling, you need to take that lid off!
 
Yuri_Rage said:
Trance, DON'T boil with the lid on! Driving off DMS (cooked corn/veggie flavors) is one of the most important reasons to boil wort. It's ok to leave the lid on when you're initially trying to get the boil going, but once it's rolling, you need to take that lid off!

thanks for the tip. I usually leave it as ajar as I can, and still keep the rolling boil going. hope this works??
 
tranceamerica said:
thanks for the tip. I usually leave it as ajar as I can, and still keep the rolling boil going. hope this works??
That's better than nothing...perhaps not ideal, depending on how much you're covering the kettle.
 
Yuri_Rage said:
That's better than nothing...perhaps not ideal, depending on how much you're covering the kettle.

next step is to insulate the brew pot then. not that i've noticed anything wrong w/my flavor...but been thinking of doing that anyway - price of electricity is going up...and that stove sucks juice.
 
I'd be interested in hearing about the hop characteristics compared to what it should be. I would guess it's going to have a bit more flavor and aroma because you didn't boil off all the essential oils, but lacking in the bitterness department because you weren't able to effectively extract the acids at the lower heat...thus making for a malty/hoppy flavored beer. And yes you will have a bit of haze...but that's just cosmetic.

The great thing about home brewing is there is no right and wrong way to do things. you're still going to end up with a malt beverage that will have the ability to get you drunk.
 
Yuri_Rage said:
Trance, DON'T boil with the lid on! Driving off DMS (cooked corn/veggie flavors) is one of the most important reasons to boil wort. It's ok to leave the lid on when you're initially trying to get the boil going, but once it's rolling, you need to take that lid off!

Until we get ourselves a turkey fryer, we're doing stovetop boils the fun way. We wrap our brewpot, dangerously enough, in a towel, and have to have the lid about half on. Every minute or two we take the lid off and let the condensation drip off into the sink. We've had no DMS problems, even using a large percentage of pils malt.
 
enohcs said:
I'd be interested in hearing about the hop characteristics compared to what it should be. I would guess it's going to have a bit more flavor and aroma because you didn't boil off all the essential oils, but lacking in the bitterness department because you weren't able to effectively extract the acids at the lower heat...thus making for a malty/hoppy flavored beer. And yes you will have a bit of haze...but that's just cosmetic.

The great thing about home brewing is there is no right and wrong way to do things. you're still going to end up with a malt beverage that will have the ability to get you drunk.

I boiled all the hops on the stove. I kept the same additions, size and time.

An after thought, you guys might be able to shed some light on. I am noticing that my AG beers are not having the same vigorous fermentation my extract beers were. I am using my oxynator, and yeast starters the same as with the extract brews, but these aren't blowing up like some of the similar gravity beers before were. Any thoughts?
 
Until we get ourselves a turkey fryer, we're doing stovetop boils the fun way. We wrap our brewpot, dangerously enough, in a towel, and have to have the lid about half on. Every minute or two we take the lid off and let the condensation drip off into the sink. We've had no DMS problems, even using a large percentage of pils malt.

I do stovetop, extract brewing and did the same thing that you did with the towels, lids, etc... and it still took FOREVER. I went out and made a heatstick...

http://www.cedarcreeknetworks.com/heatstick.htm

and now, I can boil 3+ gallons without the lid OR the stove even turned on!! I can now do the entire process in the garage or wherever without a burner at all and its still faster than it used to be on the stove. It truly is wonderful and only cost about $30 in parts and about 45 minutes to build.

If you look at the site, you'll notice the guy is holding a boil with one stick on a full sized boil. On an extract sized boil, one stick and the stove turned on will have 3 gallons leaping out of a 5 gallon pot. Just the stick is the perfect amount of heat.
 
FWIW-I've had difficulty getting my wort up to temp with my turkey fryer a few times. At first I thought that it just wasn't strong enough, but then the next time it worked great. It seems like the following really help:
-make sure you have plenty of gas in the tank to begin with
-get the flame going before setting the pot on the fryer
-baby the gas when igniting, it seems like if you give it too much too fast-it'll snuff itself out and/or not be as strong as it can be.

This may be 'old news' to you-but it's really helped get my wort hot quicker.
 
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