not enough power to boil

I live in an apartment the stove is a glass top and wont put out enough heat to boil my 5 gallons of water. I cant use a propane burner on the porch you need to be 10 ft from the building with a flame. so I need an electric burner that will create enough heat to boil my water I'm haveing a hard time locateing one does some one know whare i can get what i need besides moveing.

Are you brewing All Grain?

If not, try partial boils... boil your extract and hops in a gallon or two of water. Then add it to 3 gallons of already-chilled water in the fermenter. The great thing about this technique is that it eliminates the need for a wort chiller- use a funnel and you can be at pitching temperature in a matter of seconds.

The only downsides to this is a slightly lower hops utilization (which can be overcome by doing a late extract addition, rather than boiling all the extract for the full 60 minutes), and also the slight risk of warping a better bottle or cracking a carboy if you dribble your wort down the sides of the carboy... at least this is something that I worry about... check with other people using this technique though because honestly, I've never heard of it being a problem, it's just something I've considered.

Read up on late addition boils. I think they'll work best for your situation.

You just won't find a small, indoor electric coil type 'hot plate' that'll do a 5 gallon boil.

stick to partial boils and late extract additions.

your other option is splitting the recipe into two smaller pots. 12qt or a little bit bigger works well enough...still not a full boil, but you can get about 2 gallons in each pot, which in my opinion is better than one pot of 1.5-2gallons.

wanted to go all grain have been doing partal mash. so if i cant get a better stove i need to move it slunds like.

Have a look at my thread about improved boiling on the stovetop:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=53683

It may not help with a glass top stove, but could be worth trying.

I know of a lot of guys who do distilling- they have heating elements in the kettle. Seems to work well for boiling

i'd look into heatsticks, basically they are a water heater element attached to a handle. i know brew your own magazine did an article on them earlier this year.


good luck

FlyGuy said:

Have a look at my thread about improved boiling on the stovetop:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=53683

It may not help with a glass top stove, but could be worth trying.

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+1 on this. I've brewed on glasstops before, and some have the BTUs to heat 5 gallons of wort, some don't. Doing AG will take forever on a stovetop, but it is possible. Also splitting up the wort into several pots will make the boiling go faster.

TecherB said:

I cant use a propane burner on the porch you need to be 10 ft from the building with a flame.

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I'd boil 10+ feet from the building, then.

Outdoor propane rocks.

Yea you could always ask forgiveness.........