Indoor All Grain Brewing?

I was wondering if anyone has come up with a method for indoor all grail 5 gallon full boils? I have seen DB stovetop method but I don't think I can get 7+ gallons to boil on my stove top with breaking something.

I was thinking of setting up a 5 gallon hot tank, a 7-10 mash cooler, and run a pump to the hot tank from a kettle. Trick is finding a way to boil that much indoor.. any ideas?

electric or a hood system to exhaust gases and moisture.

Im not an expert but I brew all grain indoors... It does take some time to get the water up to temp but I can do it. I dont use a sport cooler as a mash tun, I use one of my 7 gallon buckets with a braided line. I batch sparge so I dont worry about a hot water tank... When Im mashing, Ill heat my sparge water at the same time. Once I collect my first runnings, my sparge water is ready and in it goes... at that time the wort is already warm/hot so bringing the wort to a boil doesnt take as long. hope this helps

Yeah, Id bet on electric, 240VAC and a hood to vent the steam... you can do it that way.

I do mine indoors on my range with pots on all 4 burners, takes time too but you need to use lids on the pots or for my big soup pot I brought an aluminum pizza pan to use as a lid, otherwise that pot would probably NEVER boil. Once you get them hot enough to boil you can remove the lids for boil off.

I do indoor 5 and 10 gallon batches, using a 5500W water heater element to heat water and boil.

Out of curiosity, and not to thread hijack, but what would someone be looking to spend to install a vent/exhaust to a brewroom? Its the only thing keeping me from going electric currently

conpewter said:

I do indoor 5 and 10 gallon batches, using a 5500W water heater element to heat water and boil.

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I am fairly plumbingly challenged.. Can this be used as a plug in standalone unit that a kettle can be placed on?

cabot said:

Out of curiosity, and not to thread hijack, but what would someone be looking to spend to install a vent/exhaust to a brewroom? Its the only thing keeping me from going electric currently

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I was just thinking of using my exhaust fan in the kitchen as well as a window fan.. hopefully that would be enough.

Dionysos911 said:

I am fairly plumbingly challenged.. Can this be used as a plug in standalone unit that a kettle can be placed on?

Click to expand...

you install the element in the kettle man. Its fairly involved.

All grain indoors is really not that complicated. The biggest challenge is to be able to get that volume of wort to boil. I'm lucky enough to have a 15k BTU burner on my stove. I have a 8 gal pot, 4 gal pot, 6.5 gal bucket, and 48 qt mash tun. This is my batch sparge method.

I heat my strike water and the water for my first sparge in the 8 gal pot. The water for the second sparge is in the 4 gal pot.

Here's a very quick run through of my process.
1) Hot water from 8 gal and then grain into tun.
2) Drain tun into bucket and calculate sparge volume.
3) Get first sparge from 8 gal pot and add to tun. Empty 8 gal pot.
4) Dump buckets contents, first runnings, into 8 gal pot and begin heating.
5) Drain tun into bucket and get second sparge from 4 gal pot.
6) Dump bucket into brew pot.
7) Drain last sparge into bucket and dump bucket into brew pot.

To transfer water to the tun I use a half gallon pyrex pitcher that is graduated. The key is that I can handle boiling the large volume on my stove.

I was doing AG outside but decided to move it back into the kitchen to avoid killing myself moving crap around on brew day. I just spread my BK over two burners on my stove and it comes to a nice rolling boil about as fast as doing it on my propane burner outside.

Orangevango said:

you install the element in the kettle man. Its fairly involved.

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:cross:

(more letters)

This past weekend I picked up a 10 gallon rubbermaid jug cooler to use for mashing/sparging. Next I am going to get a 40qt aluminum to span 2 burners, hopefully that gets hot enough to boil. I'm going to use my current 24qt pot to heat mashing and sparging water.

I think that should do it.. and I missing anything?

I assume you've got something to use for a false bottom or stainless steel braid, etc. to filter out the grain?

weirdboy said:

I assume you've got something to use for a false bottom or stainless steel braid, etc. to filter out the grain?

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Probably going to do the steel braid conversion. I also have a grain bag that fits inside the cooler that I can drape over the side and hold in place by screwing the lid on.. I did that for a partial mash last weekend. I only got 48% efficiency but I am sure there were other variables that contributed to that..

One of the big burners on my electric stove top will boil 6.5 gallons and I only boil of one gallon an hour.

Check out Flyguys thread on Improved boiling on the stovetop!

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/improved-boiling-stovetop-53683/

This was the thread that allowed me to go to all grain indoors on a pretty wimpy electric stove.
I used the refletix insulation, and wrapped the top and bottom with tin-foil (It's not just for hat's you know).
I also folded up some tin-foil into bars and put around 5 between the pot and the isolation to keep it from melting.
I have done 37 batch's this way using a 7.5 gal aluminium turkey fryer.
Hope this helps.

Kauai_Kahuna said:

Check out Flyguys thread on Improved boiling on the stovetop!

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/improved-boiling-stovetop-53683/

This was the thread that allowed me to go to all grain indoors on a pretty wimpy electric stove.
I used the refletix insulation, and wrapped the top and bottom with tin-foil (It's not just for hat's you know).
I also folded up some tin-foil into bars and put around 5 between the pot and the isolation to keep it from melting.
I have done 37 batch's this way using a 7.5 gal aluminium turkey fryer.
Hope this helps.

Click to expand...

This is a fantastic idea! Thanks for the link!