Burners for brew stand

[Blackdirt_cowboy]

I'm currently is the process of designing a single tier Brutus type brewing stand. I'm trying to decide what burners to use, and have been searching the interwebs for a couple of days and not finding the information I need. Here are the requirements for these burners:

1. They must be LOW PRESSURE burners. They will be plumbed into my household propane system which operates at 11" water column (approximately 1/2 psi)

2. I need the capacity to boil 20 gallons of water.

3. I plan on automating the temperature control, so burners must be compatible with Honeywell type valves.

4. I would like my brewstand to do double duty as a cook stand. It will be used to boil crawfish and shrimp, fry fish, shrimp, calf fries, etc.

I'm having trouble deciding between the cast iron burners and the jet style burners. From what I understand, the jet burners are all on or all off, so this may not be te best scenario for cooking. But they are supposed to bring large amounts of liquid up to temperature quickly. On the other hand, cast iron burners are extremely adjustable in their heat output and are great for cooking, but can they be had in a low pressure version with enough BTUs to brew with? If anyone could relate some real world experience to my delima, I'd sure appreciate it.

 

[mredge73]

How many do you need?
I would recommend low pressure banjo burners for cooking and maybe heating the mash tun.
You can use needle valves with these and turn them up and down depending on your need.
You won't find much more than 60K btu in this variant; not recommended for boiling 20 gallons.
http://stores.hurricaneproducts.net/c-63-5165-low-pressure-burner/

For the HLT and BOIL use multi nozzle jet burners. The boil kettle will be nearly 25 gallons, you will need 150-200K btu to boil this in a reasonable time frame.
The HLT will be 10-15 gallons, I would aim for 100-150k btu. Just spit balling these numbers, I haven't done the math.

 

[Blackdirt_cowboy]

That's the route I was thinking I'd need to go. I'll have three burners. I found a local supplier of multiple jet burners. He has a 23 jet burner rated at 230,000 BTU. he also has them a lot larger. Most of my boils will be between 8 and 15 gallons, but I'd like the flexibility to do 20 gallons as well.

Other than brewing, the only cooking done on the stand will be deep frying. If the burner isn't powerful enough to boil water, it dang sure won't heat grease up hot enough to fry.

 

[mredge73]

You aren't frying with 8-20 gallons of oil; you don't need but a couple gallons for a full turkey.
You will need to be able to adjust the burner for frying to be able to keep the temp on target.
A 10" banjo burner in the center would work great for this.

I would get 2 of the multijet burners and 1 banjo burner. On the HLT burner you may need to remove a few of the jets and plug them with bolts.
Will have to experiment a bit to make it work with the standing pilot lights that you will need for automation.
Also these jet burners will be overkill for a 8 gallon batch.

 

[Hockeyman]

I'd suggest at looking at what commercial cooking equipment uses in their kitchens... Many nice dual ring burners out there if you really want control and they are designed to work on low pressure propane.