Weak stove boil/all grain question

[iagainsti]

Just got back in to brewing about a year after moving into an apartment that doesn't allow me to use my outdoor burner. Just did a 2.5 gallon batch on my stove, but could only manage to bring the pot to a weak boil through out the duration of a 90 min boil. How worried should I be of dms?

My pure oil volume was 4 gallons and I still managed to boil off about 1.5 gallons in 90 min.

 

[flars]

One gallon per hour is a pretty good boil off rate for a kitchen stove. The boil doesn't need to so intense that you have mini volcanoes. Boiling temperature is the key. Having part of the wort surface at a rolling boil is sufficient.

Are you brewing with extract or all grain. With extract you could do a partial boil and top off in the fermentor. The late extract addition technique will help reduce darkening the wort unnecessarily.

Could you use two burners and two kettles for your boil for either extract or all grain wort?

I boil with the lid partially on the kettle. Allows me to reduce the heat applied by at least 30%. I do wipe heavy condensation from under the lid instead of letting it drip back into the wort. I only noticed
DMS once as I was boiling. This was with a Hefeweizen recipe with all Pilsen malts. The DMS did not show in the bottle conditioned beer.

 

[RM-MN]

I use a weak boil for only 30 minutes and don't detect DMS. Most of the malted barley available these days don't contain much of the precursor SMS so the long, strong boil may not be necessary. YMMV

 

[brewbama]

Though I've never seen this until today "Most of the malted barley available these days don't contain much of the precursor SMS", It doesn't mean it's not true - it just means I haven't seen it. However, I've read certain German text that says their boil looks more like what we'd call a simmer. I think you're OK.

"This will most likely look more like a simmer to you than a vigorous boil, but commercial German breweries routinely boil under pressure for as little as 30 minutes, and target evaporation rates of 4%." http://www.germanbrewing.net/docs/Brewing-Bavarian-Helles.pdf

 

[iagainsti]

It's an all grain batch. I did a pretty basic iPad recipe just to get my new system dialed in. Man I miss brewing outside!

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

I brewed indoors on a stove top for years, ended up buying a pot that spanned 2 burners and that boiled 5 gallon batches with ease.

 

[kristiismean]

if Electric, Kenmore makes a flat top stove that has a "power burner" that is holy crap amazing.

I bring up 7.5 gallons to a boil without issues (have to turn it down to 8.5 maintain) which means if i go bigger, I will probably stay electric.

to the OP, I am sure you will be just fine.

 

[purplehaze]

Boiled inside on a gas stove for a long time until i ruined the stove. I now strictly brew outside year round. Is your kitchen stove natural gas or electric?

 

[thunderwagn]

My glass stovetop really struggled to bring much more than 2.5, maybe 3 gallons to a decent boil. I purchased a Hot Rod brew stick and can easily bring over 8 gallons to a boil and even turn my burner off altogether. One of my best purchases. Just something to ponder.

 

[IslandLizard]

1 gallon/hr is pretty good. When I used the stove I had to keep the lid on half way to sustain a boil of 7 gallons of wort. Similar boil off as you get.

If power is an issue, use multiple pots to boil your 5.5 gallon batch. You could use a 1000-1500W heat stick to supplement the boil in the 2nd pot. You'll need to plug it into a working GFCI socket though, to be safe.

I've switched to a $180 240V 3500W induction plate since and never looked back.