Stepped up the brew pot, mistake?

I got a new brew pot this weekend, a 15 Gal. stainless pot. Could have got an aluminum 15 Gal for only a few $ less so I went stainless.

Question is, how does the shape of the boil kettle matter. The aluminum pot was tall and thin, just a bigger turkey frier, like the 6 gallon one that I have now. The stainless one that I bought is shorter and much wider, about as wide as it is tall. Will this cause a problem with the boils? For info, the turkey frier burner that I use now is too much heat for the 7 gallon pot, I have to set the pot partly off the flame to keep the boil in the pot, so I am sure that I have enough heat to boil the bigger pot, and I will not be going more than 8 gallons in the pot, I only make 5 gallon batches.

You should be fine. I use a Keggle for about the same thing you do, and the flame isn't as close to the bottom as yours will be (due to the skirt). You should have no problems.

You can't turn the burner down?

Bobby_M said:

You can't turn the burner down?

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Not really, it just has an air control. The best I could do is choke it down a little right out of the tank.
The origional pot probably will not be used for much other than heating water from now. I was just wondering if the shape of the new pot was going to cause problems.

lurker18 said:

Not really, it just has an air control. The best I could do is choke it down a little right out of the tank.
The origional pot probably will not be used for much other than heating water from now. I was just wondering if the shape of the new pot was going to cause problems.

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Your burner is very unusual in that it seems to lack a gas flow control valve. It should have either an adjustable pressure regulator or a needle valve of some kind between the regulator and the burner to control the gas flow. You could probably add a needle valve without too much trouble. I think you'd save a lot of fuel and have better control of the heat with a control valve.

lurker18 said:

Not really, it just has an air control. The best I could do is choke it down a little right out of the tank.
The origional pot probably will not be used for much other than heating water from now. I was just wondering if the shape of the new pot was going to cause problems.

Click to expand...

At the very least, turn down the valve at the tank. Could you post a picture?

http://www.turkey-fryers-online.com/bg10-turkey-fryer-burner.htm

The one I have, there is an air control dial at the end you can't see. There MAY be a regulator on the timer, I will have to look at home.

lurker18 said:

http://www.turkey-fryers-online.com/bg10-turkey-fryer-burner.htm

The one I have, there is an air control dial at the end you can't see. There MAY be a regulator on the timer, I will have to look at home.

Click to expand...

Can you grab a picture or two of your actual set up? On my Bass Pro burner, the adjustment knob is a red thing near the propane tank. I really looks more like an over sized button than a knob.

At any rate, whether you can adjust your flame or not, a wider pot should not have any detrimental effect on your boil. You may have a faster boil-off rate due to the increased surface area.

Thanks for the info. The burner will not be the problem any more with the bigger kettle, it just caused a few problems on the smaller pot, getting a rolling boil was hard, I would end up with a very vigorous, splashing boil. The bigger kettle will have lots of head space to handle this. I am getting that the wider kettle will have a higher evaporation rate, so i will need to collect a little more runnings to take care of this.