I Want a Boil Over !!

There I said it. I do indeed want a boil over.

I use the hurricane burners in my single tier stand. I even use the regulator they came with. The HLT and MT burners are fine. They react quickly and keeps temps on target in my 125-170 range just fine. No complaints.

But boil kettle. I just cant for the life of me get that full on ROLLING BOIL. I get a boil...but not a BOIL. Its the kind of boil that you really cant look at do to all the steam and the occasional 'burp' of a bubble coming to the top. But no frothing rolling boil. I have heard so many times that there are great benefits to that vigorous boil.

I have tried a few things...

I have tried just having one burner going at a time and there doesnt seem to be an appreciable difference. I've added wind shields to the burner as the hurricane are notoriously susceptible to wind affect.

So I am thinking three other options.
1) Change to a variable regulator and see if I can increase propane flow to get a better flame/mixture.
2) Raise burner closer to kettle bottom [although, I currently have the kettle at the top of the blue peak in the flame and no orange flame is being produced. I think it a good flame, albeit short.
3) Change my boil kettle burner out with a jet style burner. It is not temp controlled nor ignited with a pilot, so I am not concerned with the issues people have add using these in a gas switched environment. I would just light it and let it burn like hell.

Thoughts ?

this sounds like a stupid idea but a some type of lid, maybe the heat is escaping.

How about a heat stick to help out?

I'd swap the burner.

I bought the $29 Cabela's special fryer with a burner, aluminum pot, etc. I just made a stout and took 6.5 gallons of wort to a FULL boil in 20 minutes. I then had to back the burner WAY back and still maintained a rolling big boil.

My $0.02...

Try wrapping a piece of tin around the burner and the lower half or more of the pot. There should be some space around the pot for the hot exhaust to escape.

This will provide a wind shield for the burner and increase the efficiency of the heat transfer to the pot by keeping the hot exhaust closer to the pot for longer.

Also make sure you have the air intake adjusted correctly.

Craig

I'm thinking some tin flashing might help, I will try that.

Also, can anyone here that is doing 10 gallon batches pipe in? I'm collecting between 13-15 gallons to do a full boil down to 11-12ish.

I usually lose about 1/2 gallon during transfer from kettle to carboys in hoses, hop absorption, and left in kettle. So i end up with 5.5 gallons or so per carboy.

What are you experiencing in time for getting 13-15 gallons from 170 (mash out temp) to a full boil?

monty73741 said:

this sounds like a stupid idea but a some type of lid, maybe the heat is escaping.

Click to expand...

It will help a great deal, but never lid a boiling wort. It traps diacetyl which you want to boil off.

r2eng said:

I'd swap the burner.

I bought the $29 Cabela's special fryer with a burner, aluminum pot, etc. I just made a stout and took 6.5 gallons of wort to a FULL boil in 20 minutes. I then had to back the burner WAY back and still maintained a rolling big boil.

Click to expand...

Ditto. I have seen exactly what the OP is experiencing with a 1500W electric kettle. If ~1500W is all you're getting out of a propane burner, somethings wrong.

I'm in the same boat. 15.5 gal keggle, Bayou SQ14 burner (in between the normal cast burner and the Hurricane/Banjo. It's like a Mini-Hurricane, basically. They call it a BG12 for the standalone burner). 5 gal batches bubble like a sh!tstorm but still take excessively long to heat up. 10 gal batches take anywhere from an hour to 90 mins to go from 170-boil, and never "roll" boil.

Someone suggested I swap my 10psi for a 20psi reg, but I don't know that it's going to help because the 10psi can only go about 1/2 way before the blue flames "leave" the burner and start to extinguish jets, 1 by 1, with sheer pressure.

My hunch is that keggles just "don't work" with certain burners. My buddy has a keggle and a 55k cast burner (standard plain' ol turkey fryer, Bayou calls it a BG10) and it can boil 10 gal at a rolling boil no problem.

My next project is to swap burners on frames - I bought my SQ14/BG12 because i needed a square stand, not a round one. So I'm going to mount my old 55K/BG10 cast burner onto the square, and my SQ14/BG12 "mini-hurricane" onto my round 7.5 gal stand. Then I'm going to do another 10 gal batch and see if my times improve. If they do, I blame poor burner design, if they are similar times, I blame keggles and their heavy mass.

As far as Monty's lid is concerned, I think he meant to get UP to boil, not during the boil. A lid while climbing 170f-boil will help your time.

Chriso said:

As far as Monty's lid is concerned, I think he meant to get UP to boil, not during the boil. A lid while climbing 170f-boil will help your time.

Click to expand...

What I experienced was that it would boil as long as there was a lid, but as soon as it was removed, the evaporative loss would make it go back to that lame boil he described.

pldoolittle said:

What I experienced was that it would boil as long as there was a lid, but as soon as it was removed, the evaporative loss would make it go back to that lame boil he described.

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Same here. Good point. It at least helps with the heating-up-to-boil times though.

@OP, coming from someone who thinks HIS burner is too far down but has no way of adjusting height..... do you think you can eke yours up 1" or so? I'm curious to see if this simple adjustment fixes the issue. If so, I need to come up w/ some creative fabrication solution for mine.

I've got a regular ol' turkey fryer and I'm looking to get a bigger/better burner. From everything I've read the Bayou Classic Kab4 looks pretty mean When I've got the scratch thats what I think I'll go with

Chriso said:

My hunch is that keggles just "don't work" with certain burners. My buddy has a keggle and a 55k cast burner (standard plain' ol turkey fryer) and it can boil 10 gal at a rolling boil no problem.

Click to expand...

I don't have keg kettles. I have the Blichmanns for both the Boil kettle and Mash tun.

Chriso said:

@OP, coming from someone who thinks HIS burner is too far down but has no way of adjusting height..... do you think you can eke yours up 1" or so? I'm curious to see if this simple adjustment fixes the issue. If so, I need to come up w/ some creative fabrication solution for mine.

Click to expand...

It will take some additional fabrication on my part as well. While I thought to put in adjustable height when I built my stand, I just didnt get to that unfortunately. So my burner height is fixed although I can come up with something. If I were thinking right, I would have put them higher to start as It is easy to put the kettle on some grid later to raise it if needed.

I wouldn't switch burners. Lots of people have great success with those. I think you're not getting enough propane to it. I'd try getting a 0-30 psi reg and see what that does. This is the one I use on my stand and I can have 3 jet engines going at once if I want to.

I wonder too if it could be the tubing you're using to deliver the propane to the burner. It didn't get crimped in any way did it? Is this burner the one that's furthest away from the regulator? Maybe your tubing is just too small diameter? My propane manifold is 1/2" black pipe, so I know I'm getting plenty of pressure throughout. I'm not a gas expert - just wondering out lout here.

From the look of things, your burner doesn't need to be moved up. It looks like it would be plenty close enough to the kettle.

I'm with LS - Your burner looks like it's great placement, I was just trying to think of all angles to hit this with. Sorry I missed them not being keggles.... heck with Boilermakers, it should be spewing wort forth like lava!

What if.... can you boil on the HLT or MLT burner for one brewday, and see if the symptom changes? If it changes, it means faulty burner, faulty shutter, bad regulator, bad plumbing piece... Just trying to eliminate variables.

LS, I might try that regulator in a desperate attempt to save my setup. Otherwise I'm itching to buy a KAB (AKA BG14 standalone burner) and a flat-bottom kettle.

I have tried different burners on my stand. All the same hurricane burners. About the same results.

I will try some flashing and a different regulator.