burners

how far below the kettle do you guys have your burners mounted. what do you guys use for heat shields. i'm getting flames coming up the side of my kettle and the burner isn't even half way opened. any advice

I guess it would depend on what kind of burner, the number of BTUs, and how big the bottom of your pot is. If I turn my Banjo up all the way, the flames lick out the sides of my 20 gallon pots. I would suspect that the answer lies in increasing your distance experimentally until you find the sweet spot. If you're mounting it yourself, don't worry about what everyone else does. Can you rig a temporary adjustable mount for either the pot or the burner?

I mounted mine pretty close, maybe 2.5-3". You can get an idea from this pic. The stand is made from 2" steel. The flame really spreads out over the bottome of the keggle. Also, the skirt of the keg does a good job keeping the heat trapped under there. Don't feel like you should need to turn the heat up all the way. I never do. If you've got flames coming up around the kettle, you're just wasting propane.

i use a banjo and my kettle is a converted keg. i probally have 3-4 inches between burner and kettle. how long does it usally take to get your water up to 170. it took me a little over an hour, is this an average time. it just seems like i'm not getting everything out of my burner that i could. another problem i had today is my bazooka t came of when i was batch sparging. what a pita.

I usually start heating my sparge water with about 15-20 mins left in the mash. No problems getting to 170' within that time, especially if it's a 5 gal batch.

So, I'd say something doesn't sound right with your burner/regulator. Are you getting a really clean, blue flame?

the flame looks good to me. i was doing a 10 gal batch so i had about 8 gal of water in the tank and it took a little over an hour.

Up high enough on a banjo burner, with a good flame, high enough that flames are coming out the sides, and it takes an hour to heat 8 gals to 170? Something's definately not right. Maybe it's just that the flame is up too high and too much heat is leaving around the sides?

I mean you've got a banjo burner, the Bad A$$ mofo king of homebrew burners. I've just got these cheap $8 burners and a 10 psi regulator. I'll be doing a 10 gal batch today, 8.5 gal sparge, and I'll time how long it takes. No way it'll take 30 mins and I won't have the burner all the way up.

Any other preachers of the banjo wanna speak up and help tarheels out here?

i'll lower it for the next brew day and see what that does.

Make sure your intake is all the way open, and BTW, what was your starting water temp? If it's pretty cold, you're gonna take some time heating 8 gals of water.

are talking about the valve that controls the air inlet. it was open. i'm in washington so my starting temp was pretty low. i will have to adjust the distance and see if that helps. thanks guys for the help