Kettle Purchasing Advice

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Beaudoin

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I'm looking to buy a brew kettle, and I need some advice.

I have two 6 gal carboys that I use to brew my beer. I'm looking to do an all grain brew in a bag method for my next brew. I'm just wondering how big of a brew pot I should get. My options are 9 gal, 15 gal and 19 gal.

I'm thinking 15 gal to account for the initial water volume at 160 F with 10 lbs of grain?
 
15 minimum!,

If you are indoors on a stove though be sure your range can boil that amount of wort.
 
How would I know much my range can boil that much wort?

I have a regular electric range. Do you think it's powerful enough?
 
I BIAB in a Bayou Classic 42 qt. I've done 5 gal. batches with 20 lbs. of grain. I wish I had at least a 15 gallon, so had the option of 10 gallon batches, But I also use a propane burner outdoors. I don't think my electric stove could handle my kettle. You could always build a couple heatsticks as a temporary solution.
 
Bayou Classic has a 44 qt pot that's pretty reasonable. Should be able to handle most 5 gallon BIAB batches. Just bought one on Amazon for around $85.
 
There's a 36qt KEttle with Burner for $80.99 here...this is what I was considering...not big enough??
 
Thanks for the tips, but unfortunately Amazon.com does not deliver to Canada. :(

I really wish they did.
 
I personally bought the one with the basket for possible use with turkets or to use as a biab setup to give the bag more support
 
There's a 36qt KEttle with Burner for $80.99 here...this is what I was considering...not big enough??

Unfortunately, that's not quite big enough for 5-gallon BIAB batches.

36 qt does work fine for extract brews or if you use a mash tun. That's the size I use, but I don't BIAB.
 
I'm not sure I understand, I've seen lots of videos on YouTube where the person does a BIAB using a 6Galloon pot?
 
Don't cheap out and get anything less than 10 gallons (I agree that 15G is best).

I thought my 8.5G would be fine for 5G batches but anytime I want to do a 90 minute boil the 7G I need to start with is close enough to capacity to risk boil overs.

Go with at least a 10G kettle. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
 
I'm not sure I understand, I've seen lots of videos on YouTube where the person does a BIAB using a 6Galloon pot?

If you want to do a full boil you need an even larger pot if you want to do 5 gallon BIAB batches (because you add all of your brewing water at the beginning). According to BeerSmith, a 5G BIAB Batch of a Mild with a starting gravity of 1.033 requires 8.63 gallons of water at the mash.

Anyone you see doing 5G BIAB batches in a 6 gallon pot is almost certainly doing a partial boil. Either that, or they are topping off with supplemental water as it boils off.
 
Two weeks ago my wife bought me the Bayou Classic 16 gallon spigot pot (model 1064). I brewed a 5 gal extract with it last weekend and I love it. Now I can do 10 gal in the future. I went this route after reading a lot of people don't use the steamer basket. It was pretty inexpensive too (comparatively), I think 160 or something like that.
 
At the end of the video I saw, he topped off a Gallon or two, is that not acceptable? I was only looking at that particular 38QT item becuase its the largest piece that this large Chain Store sells here. Otherwise, there are tonnes of Bayou Classic pots that I could buy off Ebay for now and get a burner when summer rolls around. I wanted to purchase only 1 pot and use it for both outdoor and indoor use.
 
I have a 10gal Bayou Classic. Couldnt be happier. Its as big as my gas stove can handle (well...barely handle!) and still lets me do 15+ lbs of grain easily (did 14 last week @1.25qt/lb and still had a gal or two left).

No, I wont be able to do super high gravity barleywines without DME or some sort of sugar, but thats ok. I only do those maybe once a year.
 
Beaudoin said:
How would I know much my range can boil that much wort?

I have a regular electric range. Do you think it's powerful enough?

Most likely not.....
 
Don't cheap out and get anything less than 10 gallons (I agree that 15G is best).

I thought my 8.5G would be fine for 5G batches but anytime I want to do a 90 minute boil the 7G I need to start with is close enough to capacity to risk boil overs.

Go with at least a 10G kettle. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

I brew all-grain with an 8 gallon kettle and regularly start with between 7 and 7.2 gallons. I rarely have boil over problems except the one time I screwed up and sparged with too much water. I ended up with wort up to 1/2" of the top of the kettle.

I also use Fermcap-S and would recommend it to anyone.
 
I tried to brew my first batch on my electric stove (it's a Kenmore and pretty decent) and barely got a 2.5 gal of wort to boil. There is no way I could even think of doing a 5 or more gal boil on it.

I've since moved to my turkey fryer burner. I would have used it with my first brew if I had known how long it would take to get a boil.

Just my 2 cents...
 
Then there's the heat stick. I just built a smaller element version, super easy. I used JB Water Weld to make it watertight. Combined with the cook top it should be boil. I'm going to throw a higher wattage stick together next and take the whole operation to the basement.

But, I'm still shopping for a cheap kettle so don't take my word for it. :drunk:
 
I brew all-grain with an 8 gallon kettle and regularly start with between 7 and 7.2 gallons. I rarely have boil over problems except the one time I screwed up and sparged with too much water. I ended up with wort up to 1/2" of the top of the kettle.

I also use Fermcap-S and would recommend it to anyone.

Agreed. You can absolutely make less than 10G work for 5 gallon batches if you are smart and vigilant (I've learned to back the heat off just before the rolling boil).

I've just found myself wishing for the extra capacity so I wouldn't have to stand on the neck of my boil each time.
 
I was wondering, however, if a 9 gal kettle would do for a BIAB shooting for around 5.5 gal of wort in the fermenter? I was thinking that, perhaps, I could heat 6 gal on the stove to about 168 F and immerse my grains for 1 hour, then when I remove the grain, I could sparge more water over the suspended grains (that will be in a colendar) to ensure that I get 7 gal. Boil for one hour to achieve about 6 gal.

Do you think that would work?
 
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