Turkey Fryer at Cabela's for 29.99 plus s&h

Was just searching one of the slickdeals websites and happened upon this Turkey Fryer. Seems like a good deal and even has a spicket on it. Thought someone out there may be interested, or maybe someone already has one and could fill in with some input about it.

Edit: It's 29.88

 

Nice find! Very cool that it has a spigot pre-installed, I wish they had this model at lowe's when I picked up my Bayou Classic.

 

Pretty damn close to the one I have. It was $60 at Sears, so this thing is a steal. Works great too. I now use a keggle on the same burner, and use the aluminum pot for heating strike and sparge water.

 

This may be a dumb question. But I'll ask anyway. Could I use this put as a wort boiler AND for frying if I clean the hell out of it before using it to boil wort? Or does oil residue just not clean well enough?

 

I wouldn't risk it, but I am sure there a more than a few people that have done it successfully. Still I don't think it's a good idea.

 

Hey thanks! Just ordered one. $7 shipping to Puerto Rico. That was sweet.

 

For all those with a large boil kettle with a spigot - is it worth it? Would you go back to a spigot-less pot? I'm thinking I could probably wait until after the holidays this year and find one on clearance for a little cheaper, but I'm sure it wouldn't have a spigot. I'm thinking of jumping on this even though I don't plan on starting all gain until sometime next year. ~$40 shipped for a spigoted turkey fryer. It seems too good to pass up.

I'm also kind of wondering why this thread didn't take off like the other one a couple months back about the ~$35 turkey fryer from amazon. Of course that was at the time of the first post, then it dropped to <$30, and just when I decided to pull the trigger on that one, the priced jumped to $70. Get this - It's now up to $173.57!!!

 

It's a 6.5 gallon brewpot. That's probably why.

Still a great deal. I'll probably throw down. If you're doing extracts, you could do a full volume boil I imagine pretty easily. Not sure if this would do the deal for AG, but hell it's still a great deal.

 

it would make a nice hlt...

 

I didn't even notice that it was only 6.5 gallons, thought it was 7.5

 

Just a quick question, could you start the boil with all but a gallon, and then when you start losing water to evaporation, add in the rest?

 

I did that with my hefe by accident. It's messy but doable. You need at least a good 10 minutes of roiling boil to help ensure sanitation.

Oh, and I ordered one of these. I already have a 4 gal brewpot, so this is a step up. I can always drop some money on a 10 gal when I need to. I figure I'm buying the burner more than the pot.

 

It used to be listed as a 30 quart model. I ordered it towards the end of June and when it came it was the 26qt model. After three weeks of dealing with customer service we found out that all the king kooker 30 qt models they had listed were in fact 26 qt I just decided to keep it for the burner and they refunded me some of my money. I'm glad they finally changed the webpage.

 

I was thinking they must have changed it because that was the first thing I looked at when I clicked the link the first time and I could have sworn I saw 30qt. Oh well. I do like the spigot, but I think I'll keep searching.

Speaking of the spigot - no one answered my previous question - is a spigot worth the extra money?

 

I don't know if the spigot is really worth the money, on mine it unscrewed easily so you could add a better valve with a pick up tube if you wanted. The inside of the spigot looked a little iffy, some kind of chrome plated metal. The hole left behind is a little less than 3/4 of inch.

 

I just got http://www.amazon.com/Bayou-Classic-SP10-High-Pressure-Outdoor/dp/B000291GBQ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1217100692&sr=8-3 I figured it was good because 185,000 btu and the AHS high output one is 210,000 btu.

Anyone that ordered this can you post the btu output of the burner.

 

just purchased mine online from Sears for $48. Picking it up and doing my first full boil today!!

It too says 30qt... Guess I'll find out!! This also has the spigot.

 

Yes, I make mine perform double duty. You don't need to "clean the hell out of it". Standard soap/hot water/sponge will do the trick. And if you haven't cleaned it well, the oil bubbles on top of your strike water will tell you so...

 

If the 185k BTU output is BTUs per hour, just as a heads up, the math works out to, with perfect heat conversion, about 8.6 pounds of propane an hour. With thermal dynamics and inefficiency, I'd up that to around 9.5 pounds an hour potentially (depending on wind, fuel mixture, and other things). This is a disgustingly high fuel consumption rate, and I'd probably look into some kind of insulation collar to improve my efficiency.

This explains why people are blowing entire 20 pound cylinders on one brewday.

BTW, the fuel consumption rate is pretty simple.

2500 BTUs per cubic foot of propane.
A cubic foot of propane weighs .1162 pounds.

Divide your BTU/hour output by 2500 to get cubic feet per hour.
Multiply by .1162 pounds and you get pounds of propane per hour under "perfect" conditions.

Natural gas, by comparison, has about 1000 BTUs per cubic foot, which is why propane is so much more efficient.

Oh, and as a further example, we'll do the 210k burner's fuel consumption.

210,000 BTUs/hour Divided by 2500 BTUs per cubic foot = 84 cubic feet per hour.

84 cubic feet/hour times .1162 pounds of propane/cubic foot = 9.76 pounds of propane/hour.

Let's give that a reasonable 90% efficiency (so you loose 10% extra fuel due to physical impossibility to get a "perfect, lab environment" of fuel mixture, frictionless surfaces, ect ect) and you get 10.74 pounds of propane per hour.

Finally, with that kind of massive pull off of a propane tank, we're seriously looking at maybe as much as the last half of the tank freezing up, due to liquid propane flashing into gas being endothermic. As the tank empties, the temperature drops, your pressure drops, and you become more inefficient.

My solution would be to either step up to a large 60 pound propane cylinder (I use two on a manifold for my blacksmith forge, which uses maybe 2 pounds of propane an hour by comparison, and I've never frozen up since then) so that you have a far longer time before freezing your propane. The second solution is to either build or buy (you can buy for about 15 bucks) a 2-tank manifold, and hook up two twenty pound cylinders. This way, each tank is contributing half the fuel rate needed, and hopefully the tanks will stay warm far, far longer.

The more I look into this, the more I want to custom build brew burners and ceramic insulation collars. I could push this down to maybe 70,000 BTUs, and with some insulation, get you boiling, in all probability, faster than you ever would with the 200k burner.

 

hmm good info fatline. I hope I dont use 20 gallons per boil, haven't used it yet.

 

I ordered one of these and it came yesterday. It is decent but rather cheaply made. Its worth the 30 bucks I paid for it but Its not worth the 70 they want for it when its not on sale. The pot is rather thin and had a dent in it but nothing I couldnt straighten out. The burner is rather cheaply made but the stand seems sturdy enough although it burned most of the paint off of it the first time I fired it up.

The burner does a good job though. I filled the pot up with 6 gallons of water and it brought it to a boil in about 15 minutes. I then put 9 gallons in my brew pot and it brought it to a boil in 45 minutes. I'm sure it would have boiled sooner if I had put the lid on it. Not too bad for the money.

I'll be doing my first all grain Sunday on it so wish me luck.

 

I ordered one yesterday as well and I should be getting my new brew equipment in soon too. I can't wait, I'm so stoked, hopefully the rig will last me through my first few brews until I can find a better brew kettle.
Thanks op.

 

I got my kit yesterday and fired it up last night. The paint cooked off the burner and made a horrific smell, but that's alright. The pot itself was decent if not spectacular, and I've noticed a few things. I boiled 5 gallons in 21 minutes, but I had the choke tuned and my burner turned down as low as possible to keep a neutral flame. If I cranked up the flame I could probably get it down to about 15 minutes I'm sure.

Otherwise it's a decent setup.

 

Mine came in yesterday. Looks to be pretty good quality, but I'm not sure about the spigot. It looks...fragile, somehow. I think I'll not use the spigot anyway.

I haven't had a chance to fire it up yet (have to get a propane tank), but I'm looking forward to using it next weekend if my AHS order is here by then.

 

No need to use the spigot if you're either whirlpooling or using an IC.

I won't use it either, but it seems fine to me.

 

I ordered one a few weeks ago and just did a test run to cure the pot and see how the burner worked. Paint burned off mine too. The smell and the yellow flames scared the hell out of me. These things are not UL certified so you never know.

Also, I filled the pot gallon-by-gallon and marked off each on the thermometer that clips to the side of the pot. Sure enough - only 6.5 gals!!!!! I'm a little annoyed - I thought I was getting a 7.5 gal pot.

So my question is - if my target boil volume is 6gal, can I still do an AG batch with this pot? I boiled 6 gals in there with no problem (plain water though, not wort).

 

You'll risk a boil-over with anything over 5 gallons. I'd just be careful and have a spray bottle of water handy to spritz the foam as it tries to boil over. Also, you may have to settle for a normal boil instead of a roiling boil until you cook off about another half gallon to gallon of water.

Simmer: small bubbles that usually disappear before they reach the surface. Stirring usually disperses all the bubbles.

Boil: When you stir, the boiling stops, but almost immediately returns. Moderate bubbles that reach the surface.

Roiling boil: The boil doesn't stop even when you stir it

 

Thanks.

Yeah - i guess I'll just have to hold off on the boil intensity at first.
I had another idea too - what if I held the final gallon or so of my lauter in another pot and slowly added that back to the kettle throughout the boil? Would this affect my hop utilization?

 

are you guys still paying $30?

B

 

Nope. After the first time it's all yours. That's the beauty of it.

If you're asking if it's still on sale, you can search for Turkey Fryers on Cabela's web page, and you'd find out that it's not on sale any more. However, if you already have a brew kettle, you can get the burner for 35 bucks still.

I also saw this on the turkey fryer page:



Due to a new CSA regulation, all turkey fryers built after July 2007 will be equipped with a safety shut-off timer. The timer will shut off the gas supply after a preset time period unless the user manually resets it.

I haven't seen anything like this though out there. That'd be a pain in the ass in my book.