Stained stovetop, do smooth surfaces do that?

I've read about this being a way some have you were able to migrate to all grain brewing with gas. I recently moved from an apartment with a standard electric stove with the raised coils to a house with a really great smooth surface electric stove. The one in the apartment eventually stained quite after a few batches - not sure why exactly, maybe spilled a little and heated up so much?

My question is, will brewing on one of these smooth stoves do any damage at all?

biggest problem with the smoothtop electric stoves, is, if your kettle is not completley flat, it will not make full contact and the heating efficiency eill go way down.

I have heard of people having a hard time getting a 2gal boil on them.

yeah, my $950 smooth top stove does a horrible job boiling anything bigger than a 12qt stockpot.

And yes you can stain (even worse actually) the smooth cooktop.

I just purchased a smooth top range and the manual warns about spilling sugar on the top. So, I suspect wort is also a problem.

Lucky...I couldn't hold 3 gal of water at boil on my smooth top, (5 gal ss pot)...

I spill all kinds of crap on my smooth top though....and burn the living crap out of it because I don't clean it nearly as often as I should.

I just use SoftScrub and a blue 3M scrubby sponge (or a green one if I REALLY need to get some crap off of it...bu the green runs the risk of scratching)....and it comes off....just takes some elbow grease...

Thanks for the replies guys.. Time to re-evaluate my brewing. Might be done for a few months

If you have a house, get a turkey fryer!! I got one for 50 bucks, with 7.5 gal aluminum pot, (I think it works great, so shut up all you SS snobs!), the burner, 20 lb propane tank, "shrimp basket" (that will hold grain bags, etc, real well), and a pump meant to pump used oil out of the pot, but that I'll use as an immersion chiller pump! Check your local craigslist...

david_42 said:

I just purchased a smooth top range and the manual warns about spilling sugar on the top. So, I suspect wort is also a problem.

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I had a nasty boilover on the smooth top. carmelized sugar everywhere.

it did actually burn off after a few more uses and appears none the worse.

SWMBO said "no more of that" though.

I've never really paid attention to the threads where you all have talked about the turkey fryers - where's a good place to get started reading about that? Any advice you wish you knew starting out?

jasper9 said:

I've never really paid attention to the threads where you all have talked about the turkey fryers - where's a good place to get started reading about that? Any advice you wish you knew starting out?

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There isn't anything to read. You just need to find a good turkey fryer and a propane tank. Although you may also need a bigger brewpot also. My advice is to ask around on craigslist. I found mine for 30 bucks, never been used.

jasper9 said:

I've never really paid attention to the threads where you all have talked about the turkey fryers - where's a good place to get started reading about that? Any advice you wish you knew starting out?

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Just buy a turkey fryer, either for around 40-50 new or cheaper on craigslist, etc.

Make sure it has at least a 30 qt pot. (bigger is better :cross

The pot will be aluminum....make your peace with that.

If you don't want to use the aluminum pot, you can put whatever pot you want on there.

That's it.

I bought mine after Thanksgiving for about $40. The kettle is just big enough for regular beers, but a bit small for big beers. So cheap and easy compared to the stove.

I had a boil over on my stove and made a huge mess. Nothing would clean it up. I ended up having to scrape it off. It didn't ruin the stove. It took forever to scrape off though.