oven boil?

I'm sure there's a simple reason this doesn't work or people would be doing it, but here goes.

The one thing holding me back from doing a full boil is having to brew inside and not being able to get that much liquid to a boil on my stove.

I got to thinking last night... My oven can easy go up to several hundred degrees. Do boil, you only need 212F. What's to stop me from getting a kettle that'll fit on my oven, hold a full boil and just do the boil in there?

Line up and poke holes in my idea, please. It just seems too simple to work.

I have thought about this a few times, Never tried. My only thought is that it would take forever to bring it to a boil. WIth direct heat your flame is over 1000 degrees I believe but to bring something to a boil with convection heat ie. air temp, It would take quite a while I would imagine.

IF you can get it to maintain a decent boil, go for it... In my experience most residential ovens don't maintain a steady temperature. They can fluctuate by 25-50F in either side of your target temp. So if you set it for 225 (if you can) chances are, sometimes it will be at 200 and others at 250... Then there's the issue of all the steam produced. With a full boil, that's not a small amount of vapor to get out of the oven. Depending on what kind of oven you have, that could be a bad thing to have within it.

Of course, there's also the issue of needing to add things like hops during the boil, and Irish Moss or your fining of choice.

Personally, I'd rather get a stove with a high BTU burner on it for when I brew. This is on the 'critical items' list for when I get a house and remodel the kitchen (which would probably happen pretty soon after getting the house) or the first chance I get to replace the stove.

Until the day I get my dream stove, I'll just use the propane burner as much as possible.

Even if you could get a boil rolling, you'd have condensation dripping in from the top of the oven chamber. Hello DMS.

my first thought is wort all over your oven and controlling the temperature. Like other posters have said the temp that the oven reads is not always the temp that it is. I would use a thermometer to see the difference between what your oven says and what your probe or oven thermometer says, it is usually very different. Which makes me think what kind of temp probes ARE in the oven!

boilover cleanup...

Get a weight belt or a back brace or both.

See, that's what I like about this site. Every one of those points makes sense to me. I knew it seemed too simple. Thanks!

I also brew in a small apartment with a low-powered electric range. I picked up two of these and now I can get a full 7 gallons to boil:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BDB4UG/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

nickharbour said:

I also brew in a small apartment with a low-powered electric range. I picked up two of these and now I can get a full 7 gallons to boil:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BDB4UG/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Click to expand...

Do you use that heater to help your range or instead of your range.

Can you get a full boil with it without another heat source?

Oldyote said:

Do you use that heater to help your range or instead of your range.

Can you get a full boil with it without another heat source?

Click to expand...

I use them in addition to my range. I haven't tried them by themselves but I suspect that it wouldn't be sufficient with just two. I initially bought just one and used it with my stovetop but was still not able to achieve a boil (got to about 200F). Two plus the stovetop did the trick and I doubt that each one of these is more powerful than the stovetop so I think three elements is the key number for electric devices.