Ceramic Cooktop?

Hey now,
I just "brewed" my first beer from one of those Coopers kits. It was a canned kit so I know I wasnt really brewing but... Anyway will my ceramic cooktop be up to the task of some extract brewing? I know that boiling 5-6 gal. is gonna take some BTU's. Should I be looking to go the way of a turkey fryer. Just trying to keep my costs down as much as possible for my new hobby.

Probably going to have to upgrade to boil more than a few gallons. Turkey fryers are cheap, and soon they will be in every store imaginable for turkey day.

If it's a hobby that you feel you will be doing for quite some time I would recommend a turkey fryer. Home Depot's got a 4 legged one that is $40 and it's real sturdy. If you go on ebay and search for 40 qt aluminum you can find really cheap 4mm thick ones from instawares. I got mine for less than $50 after shipping. If you go to instaware's site it's more expensive than doing it through ebay for the same item.

I am confused somewhat by a "ceramic cooktop." I have a smooth glass surface stove. Is that the same thing that you are referring to?

yeah that would be the one. I guess the heating elements are ceramic.

Well, I have boiled 5.5 gallons on my glasstop. At the time by brew pot was 6 gallons. I start with my regular brew pot at 3 to 3.5 gallons of wort. I brew 2 gallons or so in a seperate pot. When both pots are boiling I add the 2 gallons of boiling water to the main brew pot. This saves a ridiculous amount of time over trying to get it to boiling temp in one pot. If you are doing extract this is the method I recommend until you can afford to upgrade. The damn glasstop elements are set to an automatic shutoff/turn-on. It greatly increases the amount of time it takes large volumes to get to boil over a traditional electric or gas stove top. The sugar in wort requires even more energy to bring it to boil thus increasing your to-boil time. When I bought my 10 gallon aluminum pot I filled it to the brim with water 1 gallon at a time and let it sit on the stove for 2 hours to test the strength of the glasstop. After the first 20 minutes I turned 1 burner on and then each of the others every successive 10 minutes to test the strenght as heat was applied. No problems. No visible stress fractures. 16 brews later as I brought my pot in with ~5.5 gallons of wort after boiling on the turkey fryer and placing on the stove while I cooled for 30 minutes, I still see no visible stress fractures. I am convinced that this stuff is pretty resiliant.

Just a word of warning with the cooktop...if you boil over, clean it IMMEDIATELY! Sugar is the enemy with glass cooktops and once it cooks on it is an incredible B*TCH to get off.

I use both a outdoor burner as well as my cooktop - I usually use the cooktop in the winter and brew outside in the summer.

+1 on what Bopper said. You need to watch your boil like a hawk (and it'd be a good idea to get some fermcap/defoamer, and a fan) to make sure you don't get boilovers. Because I guarantee, if you get a boilover and don't immediately turn everything off and clean every molecule of sugar off of your pot and your cooktop, you will have permanent stains after a 60 minute boil.

I'm prepping to brew my first batch and tried boiling 6 gallons of water on my ceramic cooktop....5 hours later, no rolling boil. I'm definitely using the turkey fryer!!!

I "simmered" my first batch on my ceramic top and that was only a 3gal partial mash, and even then it took seemingly all day to get it to do anything. Batch #2 I did a full volume boil with an aluminum pot and turkey fryer burner, MUCH better.

rowespencer said:

I'm prepping to brew my first batch and tried boiling 6 gallons of water on my ceramic cooktop....5 hours later, no rolling boil. I'm definitely using the turkey fryer!!!

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You can do a partial boil on your stove but not a full boil...need more BTU's

If your brewpot is large enough you can straddle the front and back burner with it. Before I could afford to switch to the turkey fryer I used to do 5.5 gallon full rolling boils on it all the time. Again, if you get a seperate pot going with 2 gallons or so to a boil and then add it to your main WHEN it's at a full boil you can make you glass stovetop work until you can afford a turkey fryer or if you don't have the room for a turkey fryer. Be sure when straddling the burners that you have both burners on a different cycle. You should be able to notice when the elements turn off. After that tweak it so that at least one of them is on at all times.

Tried to bring 3gal to a boil last night in a 32q Alum stockpot.......didn't happen.
I was just testing and trying to condition my new pot.

Guess I'm headed to get a burner base for it tonight.

IFMracin said:

Tried to bring 3gal to a boil last night in a 32q Alum stockpot.......didn't happen.
I was just testing and trying to condition my new pot.

Guess I'm headed to get a burner base for it tonight.

Click to expand...

Yeah, my glasstop won't boil 3 gallons either. It sucks eh? Never even had to worry about boilovers. I just switched to a bayou sp-10 and damn that thing can bring 4 gallons up to a boil really quick. . So +1 on the gas burner

Yep, went and picked it up, now I just need to wait for the kiddo to head to bed so I can do another trial boil and finish seasoning my brew pot.

Phunhog said:

Hey now,
I just "brewed" my first beer from one of those Coopers kits. It was a canned kit so I know I wasnt really brewing but... Anyway will my ceramic cooktop be up to the task of some extract brewing? I know that boiling 5-6 gal. is gonna take some BTU's. Should I be looking to go the way of a turkey fryer. Just trying to keep my costs down as much as possible for my new hobby.

Click to expand...

Be very very careful to avoid boilovers. I got one on my glass range top almost 20 years ago and it permanently damaged it. I am not saying this is going to happen with ceramic but it's better safe than sorry.

Phunhog said:

Tried to bring 3gal to a boil last night in a 32q Alum stockpot....

Click to expand...

Although I agree with the previous posters about getting a good propane fryer... a really good stainless steel stock pot with a 5 mm bottom makes a huge world of difference on both the stove and on the fryer. I just recently (yesterday) decided to move up to a 25 gallon stock but I have a 10 gallon megapot and it does a much better job of boiling compared to my previous thin bottom aluminum stockpot.