I am doing a Single Tier build and after doing the leg work on burners decided to use 2 - 23 Tip Jet burner. The main driver was price and yes I am cheap. My stand is made of a bed frame I already had and one I got off craigslist for $5.
I wanted to give some information that I didn't find on homebrewtalk.
Some of you were having problems keeping your burners lit. I can attribute this to one of two causes.
Natural Gas supply volume issues. I have run 3/4" Black Iron supply line from my 1" meter stub all the way to and on the stand only reducing down to 1/2" just before my control valves. The control valves are 1/2" Full Flow Valves rated for Air, Gas, Oil and Water. I think the full flow valves are important mainly because the typical gas shutoffs are restricted down to less than 3/8" in the ball and the full flow bodies have a nice large opening for gas flow. Don't forget the emergency shutoff on the 3/4" where it comes out of the wall and again I used a full flow. Don't use the Apollo water valves at Home Depot they are rated for water only. I got my full flow valves at True Value. Don't expect to get a great deal of control with these valves as they are 1/4 turn valves and once you hit about 60% they are, for all intents and purposes, at full open. That is just the nature of ball valves.
Improper jet configuration. Most of us don't want or need all 23 jets firing up and we only need 10 or so with no increased heat transfer above that number so several people suggested plugging up some of the jets. Why not just by the 10 jet burner in the first place? Again I'm cheap. The 10 jet burner is about double the price of the 23 and I can get cap screws for way less than the price difference on the two burners. The cap screws were M8 x 5mm at 1.0 pitch. Just take one of the tips down to the hardware store and use their thread ID board. Then dab on some yellow thread seal and plug the ports. Be very careful when threading into the ring, this is a casting and is easy to strip with a steal screw. When you look at the burner from the top you notice that all the jets are angled to point at each other, well I quickly figured out that meant that the jets are meant to run in complimentary pairs. So, if you want them to stay lit you have to remove them in pairs. I took out all of outside ring of jets leaving those that point toward the middle in the outside ring.
I ended up with an 11 tip jet burner that heats 5 gallons of water in a keg from ground water temp (50 F for me) to a sparge temp of 170 F in 22 min. Although when brewing I will probably not run it that hot as I cherried up the lower chine on the keg while running this test. And may yet move my burners a bit further from the bottom of the keg.
Hope this helps those playing with burner ideas.
I wanted to give some information that I didn't find on homebrewtalk.
Some of you were having problems keeping your burners lit. I can attribute this to one of two causes.
Natural Gas supply volume issues. I have run 3/4" Black Iron supply line from my 1" meter stub all the way to and on the stand only reducing down to 1/2" just before my control valves. The control valves are 1/2" Full Flow Valves rated for Air, Gas, Oil and Water. I think the full flow valves are important mainly because the typical gas shutoffs are restricted down to less than 3/8" in the ball and the full flow bodies have a nice large opening for gas flow. Don't forget the emergency shutoff on the 3/4" where it comes out of the wall and again I used a full flow. Don't use the Apollo water valves at Home Depot they are rated for water only. I got my full flow valves at True Value. Don't expect to get a great deal of control with these valves as they are 1/4 turn valves and once you hit about 60% they are, for all intents and purposes, at full open. That is just the nature of ball valves.
Improper jet configuration. Most of us don't want or need all 23 jets firing up and we only need 10 or so with no increased heat transfer above that number so several people suggested plugging up some of the jets. Why not just by the 10 jet burner in the first place? Again I'm cheap. The 10 jet burner is about double the price of the 23 and I can get cap screws for way less than the price difference on the two burners. The cap screws were M8 x 5mm at 1.0 pitch. Just take one of the tips down to the hardware store and use their thread ID board. Then dab on some yellow thread seal and plug the ports. Be very careful when threading into the ring, this is a casting and is easy to strip with a steal screw. When you look at the burner from the top you notice that all the jets are angled to point at each other, well I quickly figured out that meant that the jets are meant to run in complimentary pairs. So, if you want them to stay lit you have to remove them in pairs. I took out all of outside ring of jets leaving those that point toward the middle in the outside ring.
I ended up with an 11 tip jet burner that heats 5 gallons of water in a keg from ground water temp (50 F for me) to a sparge temp of 170 F in 22 min. Although when brewing I will probably not run it that hot as I cherried up the lower chine on the keg while running this test. And may yet move my burners a bit further from the bottom of the keg.
Hope this helps those playing with burner ideas.
