DIY Burner

I had rather good luck last week, using a weed burner and a pile of fireplace bricks. Honest. My turkey fryer burner was not up to the task for my old three gallon boils in a six gal pot, much less for the eight gal boil of my first all-grain. I couldn't afford real burners right now, but had plenty of time to experiment, so I basically build a burner and stand around my old picnic table and the weed burner I had. No regulator on the weed burner. Just a straight feed from the tank. About a 12 inch tall chimney of brick around the weed burner, and about an eight inch separation between the end of the burner and the boil pot. I have no idea what the BTU output was but it was impressive. The flame had to be turned up quite a bit, just to pull in enough air through the nozzle to get rid of the yellow combustion. Anyway, on to the results. Boiling eight gal of water took under thirty minutes to get a rolling boil going. Used up a fair amount of propane, but it was impressive. Talk about thinking outside of the box, but it paid off.

Will be doing another AG batch in a couple of weeks, and will sneak in a few pictures of the burner and pile of brick. This time was my first AG, and in all fairness, I didn’t want any pictures or witnesses, incase the worst happened and I had to destroy the evidence. It was a three step mash of about 1/3 unmalted wheat, so I didn’t start out with the easiest, and I ended up with too thin a mash and could only batch sparge once. My efficiency was way down, and I have not actually run the numbers yet. Kind of afraid of the results. But I did learn a bunch and the weed burner system was the surprise winner of the event.

Fritz

I would love to see some pictures!!

Will have to wait till my next brew session. I suspect it will be a while before I am authorized to post attachments, so I will have to put in links to another forum. Any idea how long I have to be a member to post pictures?

Crabnut said:

Will have to wait till my next brew session. I suspect it will be a while before I am authorized to post attachments, so I will have to put in links to another forum. Any idea how long I have to be a member to post pictures?

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I think you need to have 20-25 posts, but there may be a time limit as well. You can post links to the photos and someone can "Quote" you in a response and the photos will then appear in their post.

I'd be interested in seeing this too

I would venture that the unregulated weed burner is wasting a lot of gas. A good burner would pay for itself very quickly in fuel cost savings. Shop around, ask around and check out Craigslist, garage sales etc and you will find lots of them available dirt cheap. A lot of people bought turkey fryers without considering how hazardous they can be. They also did not realize how much oil is required and didn't think about what to do with the oil after frying the bird. Too much hassle for a couple of turkeys a year probably. So, they wind up at garage sales a lot and we get them for almost nothing. You should be able to land one for $25 or less. For $50 you can get a new one.

Good work on improvising a burner, but I think you'd be much better off with one of the commonly available propane cookers.

I've often thought that you could build a burner using pipe fittings. Then I looked at the prices and found that you can buy the burners without the stand very cheap. Without a regulator they are like $10. You couldn't fabricate one for anything close to that.

I refired up the burner today just to get some pics, and they did turn out ok. I posted three pictures on TheBitterBrewer.com • Index page under equipment.
Maybe someone can pull the pictrues over for me.....
Hopefully, this link will function properly.

TheBitterBrewer.com • View topic - Propane Burners

I do suspect that there was some major inefficiencies at work. But you have to admit that this did look rather rough, in the spirit of DIY. And my guess is I will use it for a while just because of how fast it heats water, and of course, how it looks.

Fritz

I just ordered one of these. No doubt it will need to be modified to hold a keggle, but I plan on ripping the burner out eventually for using in the brew rig I'm building. With shipping, my total came to $40.45, and this thing supposedly gets up to 170,000 BTU's. Fairly inexpensive, from what I've been been able to find.

12" propane burner

Crabnut said:

But you have to admit that this did look rather rough, in the spirit of DIY.

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you're using that thing on an old wooden picnic table???

I also am surprised that the table didn't catch on fire, glad it didn't though! You may want to look into doing a layer of bricks below the burner, or some other way to shield the table from the heat.

Thanks for pulling the pictures over. As for the table, it ain’t a good DYI project if there is not some element of risk and trepidation in all parts of it…. I suppose it's possible I was subconsciously trying to get rid of the table. My wife hates it. And look at it. It’s unusable. However, I did have safety in mind, and actually tracked the temps at the table surface using a non-contact thermometer. They never exceeded 110 F, so there was never even a remote danger. That burner head pulls a lot of air through it from the bottom, and the inflow of air through the base of the brick pile and through the slats of the table was noticeable. In the end, sadly enough, there weren’t even any scorch marks. My wife will have to seek other means to do in the table.

Fritz

I would be more concerned about the stability of the keggle than about the fire hazard. You'd probably have a lot of indications that the table was being scorched long before it erupted into flames and even then, a garden hose should take care of it easily.

Balancing that keg full of boiing wort precariously on a few bricks looks dangerous to me. Placing it on the overhanding part of the table isn't the best location either. That's a lot of weight on the overhang. Hope the table is heavy enough to counterweight it. Using bricks & blocks for support might not bee such a good idea, especially if they are not fire brick. Brick, block and even some stones can split, crack or otherwise fail due to exposure to high heat. Most won't, but some can. I wouldn't trust them. Getting splashed with 10 gallons of boiling liquid would be a major drag. Don't let Murphy catch up with you!