A Question About BTUs

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Brianyear

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I'm planning to start my journey into All Grain Brewing.
I have an opportunity to buy some equipment at an incredible price. This includes the boiler and burner. My question is: Is 58,000 BTUs good enough for 6.5 gallon boils?
Obviously the more - the merrier, but will this be enough heat to keep a rolling boil for at least an hour?
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.
 
That's plenty of heat for 5 gallon batches doing a full volume boil. If you have thoughts in the back of your head about upgrading to larger batches though (even in the distant future) you might want to consider getting something a little bigger. You can always crank down the heat on a larger burner with a ball valve (or regulator if you plan to use propane). I started out with 150,000 btu jet burners when I was brewing 5 gallons. I now use those same burners to brew 30 gallons. Besides, having some extra heat comes in handy when you want to warm things up in a hurry.
 
To give you another prrepective, i have a 2 burner camp chef rig with two 30k btu burners. It takes me about 15 minutes to heat 65 deg water to 170 and another 10 to get my 6.5 gallon wort boiling, ive been considering a 60k to 100k btu burner but its not a priority atm. IMO the heatup time is only a problem when im heating mash water or getting my wort boiling. Sparge water is just a matter of planning ahead.
 
I have a Brinkmann turkey fryer with 45,000 BTU that can keep 6.5 gallons rolling. You can always throttle down the regulator if things get too rolling. If you're going to be doing 10 gallon batches, then BBL_Brewer is spot on.
 
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