Upgrading to full boil and AG, possible in kitchen

I live in an apt so cant take my brewery outdoors. Im doing 5 gal extract batches now in a 5 gal pot. First thing is I want to upgrade to full boil, then to all grain batch sparging. My question is has anyone else had luck doing this in thier kitchen, I just don't think my burner can crank out that kind of heating power. Also how big of a kettle do I need to do a full boil?

 

I did 5 gallon all grain batches in my 10 gallon pot on my stove. I had to use 2 burners under the pot and it still took about 35 minutes to get to a boil.

 

Lots of poeple do full boil bathes on their stove but most of them do smaller batches due to the lenght of time it would take to boil a full 5 gallons or that they have height limitations for kettles. The size of your kettle will depend on the size batch you do. I have a 30qt (7.5 gal) kettle I use on my turkey fryer and do full boils for 5 gallon batches. I would'nt go with any smaller of a kettle though because I like the amount of room left on top to help prevent boilovers. This same pot would never fit on my stove because the microwave/hood is placed directly above my stove and I wouldn't be able to take the lid off, stir the wort, or put in a chiller. If you are dead set on a full boil just make smaller batches. If you want to keep doing 5 gallon batches topoff with cold water, which would help cool it to pitching temps faster as well. Even when I do full boils for 5 gal batches I usually have to add a small amount of top off water anyway because of evaporation.

 

Maybe try 3.5 gallon batches...it would be tight and I don't know your boil off but you should get it all in there and be okay.

 

Yeah space isnt a problem in my kitchen as my stove has nothing above it and plenty of counter space to either side. Just the heating ability of my stove im just doubtful of. Is a 7.5 or 10 gal kettle usually wide enough to span over two burners

 

My 9 gal bayou classic kettle just barely spans two burners but sizes vary so you should measure your own burners. I use two 9k btu gas burners to get 7gal boiling in about an hour with the lid on. Keep in mind that an oversized boil kettle will lose more heat and make it harder to achieve a boil.