full boils on kitchen gas stove

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scottab

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Currently i am an extract brewer with a 3 gallon kettle which has worked fine so far.
I'm planning on getting a larger kettle so i can do full boils but wince i'm not planning on getting a propane burner any time soon i don't know if i should waste my money buying the larger kettle or the 2.5 gallon keg adventures in homebrewing has on sale.

Are fill boils possible on a home gas stove?
The kettle i'm planning on getting is the 8 gallon kettle megapot like:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003EW8HWY/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I have an average 4 burner GE range stove/oven.

Would i be better off getting the keg setup?
 
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Currently i am an extract brewer with a 3 gallon kettle which has worked fine so far.
I'm planning on getting a larger kettle so i can do full boils but wince i'm not planning on getting a propane burner any time soon i don't know if i should waste my money buying the larger kettle or the 2.5 gallon keg adventures in homebrewing has on sale.

Are fill boils possible on a home gas stove?
The kettle i'm planning on getting is the 8 gallon kettle megapot like:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003EW8HWY/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I have an average 4 burner GE range stove/oven.

Would i be better off getting the keg setup?

I have a kick-ass burner on my gas stove (it's a professional stove) and I could use a 7.5 gallon kettle on that one burner and get a nice boil. It barely fit under my microwave, but it did, so it worked great for me.

It really depends on YOUR stove, though, of course. Even with my great professional burner, it took about an hour to bring 6.5 gallons to a boil.
 
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I have a fairly standard GE NG stove and one burner is 12k BTU, two are 8k i think and one is a 4k simmer burner. I put a 10G Blichmann on the biggest burner and didn't have any problems getting to a boil and getting a decent rolling boil. I usually did 7G preboil. It BARELY fit under my microwave.
 
Yeah second the depends on your stove.

I have an electric stove and can do full 5 gallon batches in my 30qt turkey fryer pot on it.
Boiling 6.5 gallons and keep it with a steady rolling boil. So it really does depend on your stove as I know a lot of other brewers in here have made comment about having a hard time boiling on an electric stove.
 
I've got a 9 gallon kettle and I straddle it over 2 burners and more than 75% of each burner is utilized. It works fine as I boil about 7.5 gallons of water in it.
I also put tin foil on below the grates for spills but it also reflects the heat and helps....I think.
 
I have a kick-ass burner on my gas stove (it's a professional stove) and I could use a 7.5 gallon kettle on that one burner and get a nice boil. It barely fit under my microwave, but it did, so it worked great for me.

It really depends on YOUR stove, though, of course. Even with my great professional burner, it took about an hour to bring 6.5 gallons to a boil.

I'm THRILLED to hear this from a respected home brewer!

I have a GE Profile gas stove and that was about my rate to get a pot of covered cold tap water to a boil. I turn my stove on high as soon as I start lautering and I'm still at about an hour before I hit the official boil mark. I take about 45 minutes to lauter so it's not too bad of a lag time.

I think you should be fine.

To answer the question, I think you should go for the larger kettle as you're headed in that direction anyway. I think eventually you'd be kicking yourself for getting the smaller kegs. My opinion.
 
pcollins said:
To answer the question, I think you should go for the larger kettle as you're headed in that direction anyway. I think eventually you'd be kicking yourself for getting the smaller kegs. My opinion.

The smaller keg is because the fridge i would put it in is our secondary and not a lot of space in it, particularly height space... eventually i'll prob build a keezer or a dorm fridge kegerator but i'd like to save myself some time since i pre boil my top off water the day before or up to 3 days before. Getting 3gal boiling takes out 20-30 min on my stove so the hour long time to bring the full boil to temp is not a major loss of time... in fact when i consider it with the pre boil i gain time.
 
I used to boil on an electric stove. took forever and stunk out the house, so I moved outdoors. Still got a 92-93 degree boil going and made some good beers.
 
If I were thinking of trying to do large stovetop boils, I would think that an aluminum kettle would be best at heat transfer, followed by a stainless kettle, then a layered thick bottom kettle like the megapot. A thick bottom kettle is not needed for boiling wort and likely takes more energy IMHO. YMMV cheers

45 bucks delivered...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/40-Quarts-A.../310436139907?pt=Cookware&hash=item48476f9383
 
Just use two 5-gallons pots on your stove. I've done this for years. Saves money in pot expense too, since 5g are so cheap.
 
SpeedYellow said:
Just use two 5-gallons pots on your stove. I've done this for years. Saves money in pot expense too, since 5g are so cheap.

Do you split your wort or do you boil top off water in one and the other is wort?
 
I have the typical GE coil stove and yes, it is possible to do a full five gallon boil, even a 90 min boil with 6.5 gallons starting but it will take a long, long time to reach boil. I went for broke one time and did a 6 gallon batch in an 8 gallon kettle with a 7.5 gallon pre-boil volume with a 90 minute boil. I used a second pot to get some of the wort boiling and then added that to the kettle but it still took about 90 minutes to reach boil. I literally went for broke because the weight and hours of heat melted the housing on the connector that powers the coil and shorted the coil and switch. Had to replace the coil, switch and wire harness. Ever since all my batches over three gallons go outside on the turkey fryer I bought shortly afterwards.

Some people have said they can't reach a full boil on a coil stove so the answer for your particular stove may be no. However, for many stoves they do make a canning element that handles more heat and has better support to hold up a heavier kettle. If your stove can accept one of these then you may be able to boil a full batch without fear of blowing out your stove like I did. When I looked into it I found my particular GE model does not support the canning element.
 
ReverseApacheMaster said:
Some people have said they can't reach a full boil on a coil stove so the answer for your particular stove may be no. However, for many stoves they do make a canning element that handles more heat and has better support to hold up a heavier kettle. If your stove can accept one of these then you may be able to boil a full batch without fear of blowing out your stove like I did. When I looked into it I found my particular GE model does not support the canning element.

Since i have a gas range no worries about coils
 
scottab said:
Do you split your wort or do you boil top off water in one and the other is wort?
I simply split my wort into roughly equal portions, and of course split the hops too. So it's exactly like any other all grain brewer does, just using 2 pots. Heats up really quickly too!!
 
I have a GE Profile gas range that has a 'power boil' burner that, I think, is rated at 15k btus. I assume this will bring 6-7 gallons to boil in an aluminum pot. Can anyone confirm?

I currently boil 4+ in a 5-gal pot, and it does this without much trouble. Would like to step up to full wort boils.
 
I have a GE Profile gas range that has a 'power boil' burner that, I think, is rated at 15k btus. I assume this will bring 6-7 gallons to boil in an aluminum pot. Can anyone confirm?

I currently boil 4+ in a 5-gal pot, and it does this without much trouble. Would like to step up to full wort boils.

You should be fine. Like others mentioned, it'll take a while to boil.
 
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