The maximum amount of water i can boil on my really weak built-in electric cooktop is around 1.5 gallons. (despite the largest heating "circle" is rated for 3600W)
Since i am a beginner i am all right with doing several 1 gallon batches until i learn how to do a good brew without infections, off-flavors etc.
By trial and error i came to the conclusion that i will need about 2 gallons of water (mash + sparge) to be able to put 1 gallon of beer into the fermenter.
What i do is mashing my grains in 1 gallon of water and after mashing i start to boil it. Meanwhile i do the sparging by putting my grain bag into about 1 gallon of sparge water and let it sit there for a few minutes, moving it around and stuff.
During the boil i just constantly (every 10 minutes) adding my preheated (so it won't stop the boil) sparge water to the boil to keep the boiling wort around the 1 gallon mark.
So basically i never boil more than 1 gallon of water for a 1 gallon batch and i seen some info in other threads that this could be not enough water, kinda like a partial boil.
Is this bad practice? Should i use as much water as i can for the boil? (i think i can get up my water amounts to boiling 1.5g and adding 0.5g during the boil)
Since i am a beginner i am all right with doing several 1 gallon batches until i learn how to do a good brew without infections, off-flavors etc.
By trial and error i came to the conclusion that i will need about 2 gallons of water (mash + sparge) to be able to put 1 gallon of beer into the fermenter.
What i do is mashing my grains in 1 gallon of water and after mashing i start to boil it. Meanwhile i do the sparging by putting my grain bag into about 1 gallon of sparge water and let it sit there for a few minutes, moving it around and stuff.
During the boil i just constantly (every 10 minutes) adding my preheated (so it won't stop the boil) sparge water to the boil to keep the boiling wort around the 1 gallon mark.
So basically i never boil more than 1 gallon of water for a 1 gallon batch and i seen some info in other threads that this could be not enough water, kinda like a partial boil.
Is this bad practice? Should i use as much water as i can for the boil? (i think i can get up my water amounts to boiling 1.5g and adding 0.5g during the boil)