Brew Kettle

The last thing I need to move to ten gallon full boil batches is a larger brew kettle. It seems I need an 80 quart pot. I have a 30 quart now and have frequent boil overs doing five gallon batches. What is everybody using and how large?

Yup, I always say "Take what you want to boil, then double the capacity of your pot to do it without boilovers. 80 would be your best bet...although if you can, get a keggle..cheaper and heavy duty.


Dan

doubling the capacity is a little bit of overkill. Generally 1.5 times your batch size is sufficient. So for a 10 gallon batch a 15 gallon (60 quart) will suffice. A real simple way to deal with boilovers is to have a spray bottle full of plain water handy as your wort comes to a boil. Just keep spraying the foam and giving the wort a stir. This will break up the foam and it will drop back into the boil. Once the foam stops forming, you no longer have to watch it as close and can get on with other brew day duties like cleaning the mash tun.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

I'm not sure I buy that. After factoring in evaporation, loss to hops, etc, its nearly impossible to do a 90 minute boil (for big brews with lots of grain), in my experience.

If you don't need to do 90 minutes boils, 1.5x batch size should be fine though.

-D

I have a 15 gallon boil kettle for my 10 gallon setup. I can do full wort boils with no boil over as long as I monitor it. I haven't had a boil over in ages.

For me to get 5.5 gallons, I have to boil roughly 7.5 gallons. In my 10 gallon kettle, you'd be surprised at how little room you have for boilovers. That's why I say double it. It's just my preference.


Dan

Guys, I used to do 15 BBL boils in a 500 gallon brew kettle. Yes, I had the rare boilovers, and it was my job to clean those up.

Granted, homebrew is done at a much smaller scale, but if you monitor the boil, you can do a 5 gallon boil, in a 6 gallon pot. (But, it is MUCH easier in a larger pot!) (We also had a product called "No Foam," that would completely wipe out any foaming up of the boil. It would break down, and not hurt the head on your beer. Took a tablespoon, in a 500 gallon pot.)

steve