Natural Gas Hurricane Pics

Over the last year I've been working toward brewing outside. First I had a QD and ball valve installed right after the gas meter along with a 3/8" Charbroil brand QD hose that is made for grills. I was a bit worried that it wouldn't deliver an adequate amount of gas but at least I didn't have any other losses in pressure or volume do to piping.

I just got my Hurricane burner and NG valve/orifice. Hurricane sold it directly to me since I was having a hard time finding them in stock online, it was about $60 including shipping and the package was HEAVY.

I work in a factory that sells cabinetry and we had some scrap pieces of 1 1/4" square tube steel powder coated silver that I used for the uprights and pot support and I was able to get a piece of black melamine coated particle board (edge banded in black laminate) for the base. Pretty nice free stand!

I'm still working on getting a keggle but tried a test fire tonight with my 5.5 gallon pot which was barely large enough to sit atop the stand. Here are some pictures along with the temperature readings along the way. I used "cold" water from my tap but I usually use water from the hot water heater to reduce times but I know many of you prefer straight "cold" tap water due to purity.

6:49pm 53F
6:57pm 91F
7:02pm 115F
7:09pm 145F
7:16pm 176F
7:24pm 203F
7:27pm 210F

So it was 38 minutes to take about 5 gallons from 53F to 210F. I plan to do 10G batches on this burner and don't anticipate any problems. I'm totally loving the NG burner, its very peaceful to watch while at the same time being totally bad a$$.

One reason I wanted to post this was that there is very little reading on NG burners for brewing. The consensus is that the multi-tip burner are ok at full blast but don't turn down well. The hurricane seems really nice from 1/4" flames to full blast. The pot had no noticeable soot deposits after the test. It was also questionable whether or not the 3/8" QD hose would supply enough gas but I believe it has, the 1/2" and 3/4" hoses run a lot of $$$. Also FYI I set the top of the burner 3 1/2" below the surface the pot sits on.

Very nice, you could raise the burner about 1" if the burner is at full fire in the picture.

What a nice sculpture you have there. A piece of art in my humble opinion.

I love my Hurricanes powered by natural gas. I started out using propane turkey fryers. having just bought a new country home and will have a dedicated brewery I am considering moving to electric.

Actually, I may convert my NG to propane providing me the option of electric or gas depending on my mood.

Wow, looks great! Do you know what the orifice size is for the propane fitting and the new natural gase one? If not, is there any way you could unscrew it from the burner and measure the orifice size?

I believe that knowing what the orifice size is would help a lot of others in modifying theirs to use natural gas. Also knowing what your NG gas pressure is would be helpful.

There are lots of reference charts on the web for looking up BTU output based on orifice size and gas pressure. Just yesterday, I started modifying a burner from propane to NG. I started with a .043" orifice that was rated for about 12,000 BTU under propane. According to the charts, if I open it up to .0595", I should get the same output on NG. (note this is for a lower output burner to be used on the mash tun).

I believe that Hurricane drills their natural gas orifices out to 1/8". I have no idea what my pressure is though, all I know is that its hooked up after the city's meter/regulator.

Looks great to me. Could you please take a pic of it running at the lowest flame (clean blue) you can get out of it?

How stable is the pot on the top? I would hate to hear about a hospital trip because you got 5 gallons of boiling wort dumped on you. I know you said that you will have a keggle eventually, but I thought it worth asking.

I will get a picture of "low flame" but it is really small, about 1/4 of pure blue. You can actually go lower but they start to extinguish.

The taper on the bottom of the pot actually holds it on there pretty well and is stable but I don't plan on doing this much, one batch at most.

Here is a picture of the a low setting, using the included ball valve on the orifice you can adjust easily. One thing I will say is that I need to add a wind shield especially if I plan on using any low settings. The flame seems pretty sensitive to any wind but some flashing on the stand should solve this.

that is a cool stand, very simple,does it wobble?

Come to think of it, I am not getting anything near the flame you are producing in your first pic. Might you know why?

There's no wobble, there are (4) 1/4" bolts going through the base into threaded inserts in the bottom of the legs as well as (4) M6 bolts going through the legs into the burner. If anything you can torque the stand if you try but the columnar load of the stand is there for a ton of weight.

Gammon, if you aren't getting the flame I am then you probably have a lack of gas delivery to the burner. Keep in mind pictures aren't entirely accurate but my burner looks about like the picture. You may want to check the following:

-Distance from the home's meter as well as the diameter of the piping and other appliances using NG.
-Orifice diameter, mine is 1/8"
-Pressure after the city's meter/regulator, not sure what mine is but have heard that this varies a bit.
-Diameter of tubing going to burner, in my case I used the Charbroil brand 3/8" hose/ quick disconnect kit they sell for gas grills, for me this diameter seems to be enough however I have heard of people using 1/2" and 3/4" hose but it is very expensive. IMO if my 3/8" hose can deliver the required amount of NG to the burner then most people should be able to as well unless your pressure is really bad.

Well I brewed with the hurricane today for the first time, unfortunately I didn't have a keggle but was still impressed. I did have to boil some wort in another kettle in the kitchen and still had a small boil over even with fermcaps, this thing makes the wort boil like a volcano if you let it. I'm almost certain this thing is going to be awesome for 10g batches.

One interesting thing is that the flame on the hurricane is 99% invisible in day light, kind of a bit odd but worked out ok. Kind of makes it hard to get an idea of the height of the flame. I will definitely need a wind screen, this thing hates the wind with a passion.