could not maintain a full boil

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catfishunter

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Hey whats up? I attempted a full boil last night for the first time with a bigger pot and could not get a rolling boil started. i tried using my electric stove but it did not work. Rather than throw out the wort i attempted to remove about two gallons from my stock pot and transfered it to another pot where i got a steady boil. the other four gallons only achieved a temp hovering around 210. Although the wort was rapidly moving around the pot, i never got a full rolling boil. I put the wort in my bucket and treated it like i normally would any batch. My question is...will it turn out ok, or should i just dump it? By the way it was an all grain pale ale and im getting a propane burner for the next batch....Any advice would be great. Thanks.
 
The point of the boil is to:
Sterilize the wort
Evaporate the volume to your intended batch volume
And to isomerize alpha acids
210 is hot enough to kill anything, so you should be good there
As far as evaporation rate and your OG goes, if you hit your numbers then you should be fine too.
The last one, tho, I'm not 100% sure about.
 
Well it will isomerize AA at that temperature. I brewed at 7k feet for a long time and boiling was around 199 at that altitude. Brewed some damn good IPA. I know you didn't see a good boil, so you probably didn't have one, but the temperature of boiling water lowers as you increase in altitude.

Have you thought about making a heat stick? The propane burner is the simplest way to get a nice boil going. Depending on what you get you can move up with it too to 10 gallon boils should the need arise in the future.

Good luck!
 
I've had essentially the same problem before, and was able to make it work for about a dozen batches with no trouble. It isn't ideal - the boil-off times were often in the three to four hour range - but I was able to evaporate the water out over time. The only real problem I had was that I often had to use two separate boilers to speed up process, and that it made it hard to predict when to make hop additions (hence the reliance on First Wort Hopping in most of my recipes, which had the advantage of simplifying the process as well).

As it happens, I purchased a propane burner myself this weekend. Due to other issues, I haven't used it yet (I'd been planning a brew session yesterday, but didn't have everything set up for working outside until early afternoon, which was too late to get started). I expect that the burner will shave at least three hours off of my brew time, and working outside (as opposed to the cramped kitchen space) should make both the brewing and the clean-up easier.

BTW, if you are getting the propane burner, you would be well advised to spring for an inline water filter fitted for garden hose, as well as a garden hose specifically set aside for the inflow and a potable water hose for the outflow. From experience helping out at the Cover Hops Society's group brews, I can tell you that being able to run water outside rather than carrying it out makes things much, much easier. If you do get one, make sure it is a carbon block filter rather than a cheaper sediment filter model. I bought mine at Ace Hardware, and despite the fact that it wasn't designed for that purpose - it is an under-sink model that I needed to add a series of brass adapters to on each end to connect to the hoses - it works like a charm. Amazon has several for sale, of varying quality, and Midwestern Brewing Supplies sells a model that sounds very good. Make certain that the outflow hose is the white potable water (food grade) kind, or you may get off flavors.
 
Don't forget, DMS is also removed from the wort during boiling, however this will not be a problem if you are using extract.
 
I picked up a turkey fryer from wal Mart for 40 bucks. I wish I was able to afford a more powerful one, but without it I would not be able to brew period. Just a thought for ya.
 
thanks for the responses. i found a decent burner on amazon for around 50 bucks. I saw walmart has the whole turkey fryer setup for around 40. not a bad price but i already bought the pot but thanks for the heads up.
 
@ schol. Ill have to get one for the spring. i actually filtered 8 gallons of water once through a tiny brita pitcher lol. It sucked.
 
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