Aluminum Pot Not Boiling Water????

[Tedyfinger]

I have a 5 gal. and 8 gal. SS pots. I brew 2.5 gal BIAB always. For most recipes my 5 gal pot works fine, and the 8 gal is an overkill, for some recipes with larger grain bills, the 5 gal falls short of space by just a bit. I started looking for a 6 gal pot and there are not many around, I found this 24 qt. Vollrath 7306 Arkadia stock pot, 6 gauge that looked perfect, ordered from webrestaurant.com and did my first water boil last night trying to figure out the boil off rate for it. I have always brew on my stove and never had an issue boiling up to 4 gal of wort or water in my 5 gal SS pot, but last night I tried to boil 3 gal on the aluminum pot and yes, the water got to 212F and I could see some tiny bubbles coming from the bottom of the pot but it never got to a rolling boil???? What is wrong with this pot? I actually was hoping for a more vigorous boil being aluminum a better heat media transfer. The pot is super solid and professional grade, so what gives???

 

[CGish]

What kind of stove do you have? Gas, electric, glass top?

What is the size difference between the burner and the new pot?

Is the new pot larger in circumference than the old one?

A picture or two might help.

I know that once I go past the four gallon mark on my glass top stove, it is almost impossible to boil without the lid on. A 1-2 gallon batch is fine, but a 2-3 gallon batch (with the required boil off amount) can be problematic.

Did you try partially covering the pot to see if it would boil with a lid on?

 

[Tedyfinger]

I have a gas stove, the new 6 gal. aluminum pot is about half inch wider and taller than my 5 gal SS, I could try covering the pot yes, but like I said, I never had a problem boiling 3 gal without a lid before on my slightly smaller SS pot, weird, I can still do the mash in the aluminum and then transfer the wort to the smaller pot and boil, but that kind of defeats the simplicity and easy of the BIAB process.

 

[CGish]

Odd. Gas stoves are generally the best for brewing since the heat stays on all the time. Hopefully someone else will have some better ideas for you.

 

[b-boy]

Increased thermal mass of the pot causes an increase in heat loss from the pot (because it's AL). This is offsetting the increase in heat transfer gained from AL?

I'm just throwing stuff out there.

I'd be interested in hearing boil times for equivalent water volumes in each pot.

 

[Tedyfinger]

The aluminum pot definitely feels hotter that my SS, to the point of not been able to touch the handles while the water is hot, so I guess that is where my heat is going, last night the pot was half empty, leaving all this dry metal as a radiant heat source, anyway, at the end of the tale, I either get a new more powerful stove or boil outside.