Bayou Burner using lots of propane

[fnord]

I'm finding as I get more experience I'm caring less and less how much propane I use as long as my beers are good. Not much beats sitting in the sun, music blasting, and sipping on a delicious homebrew thinking 'I made this' while making more. Using an extra dollar or two worth of fuel is irrelevant to me in that state of mind.

It probably helps that the first thing I did when I bought my burner was to make a heat shield and my first batch with it (boil only) only used two pounds of propane.

 

[Beezy]

I am with you man my point is is that I feel like I am wasting a lot of fuel just screwing around with my technique.

 

[duffman2]

I definitely need to make an adjustment to mine. The flame is all yellow and blows out of the sides of the pot. Then I get this black carbon "soot" crap all over the pot that is hard as hell to clean up. And I think I've had infestation of some sorts in some of the burners because they are definitely plugged.


Also I know it's using too much fuel the way it's running now. But besides the damper adjuster, I'm not sure how to get a better fire.

 

[fnord]

The damper on mine is about 80 - 85% open, it's working pretty well for me so I haven't experimented with adjusting it more.

As was suggested earlier I tried to use sound as a guide when I first started it up. It's kind of tough to gauge since it's somewhat relative. Once finding the lowest pressure that would hold a steady boil I marked it with a sharpie on my regulator. If I collected an extra gallon or so of runnings I can turn it up from there, and when I'm getting close to boil I'll turn it up to ensure a good hot break, then drop it back down and adjust from that mark as necessary. My last couple of batches I ran my boil at 1 o'clock from it.

The flames on mine are only visible at night, but they are about 1" - 1 1/4" and all blue when at my mark.

 

[chezhed]

I have a KAB6 and a Blichmann. Just got the KAB6 on my brew stand and have only used it once for my HLT. It definitely needed help as it was taking forever to get water to mash and sparge temps. Pot sits much higher from flame than on Blichmann. And I was completely outside for the first time, as prior brews have been in the breezeway. I finally figured that the wind and huge gap were the culprit and made a wind shield. Luckily I had some thin aluminum sheet and wrapped it around the legs of the Bayou, duct taped it temporarily and voila, great improvement. I've since riveted the thing together and it tightly fits around the legs so I can just slide it up out of the way if need be to.

If/when I change from a cooler mash tun to heat controlled, I would definitely go with the Blichmann as opposed to the Bayou, or build my own heat stand with just the burner.

 

[superbob404]

I'm still building my brew rig using 3 Bg12 burners & I am wondering what a good pot to burner distance is. I do like the stove pipe idea, very informative thread!

 

[N3Bruce]

If you are thinking of going from tank swapping to refills at the local propane distributor or hardware store, you should check the manufacturing date on the tank. By law, a tank must be either retired or recertified after 12 years. A recertification can only be done once, and is good for only 5 years. If you have an old tank that is near or past the end of its refillable life, you can play Blue Rhino Roulette and hope to get a better tank, but at $24.99 for 15 pounds of propane, versus $20 for 20 pounds, 3 such exchanges would pay for a brand new tank. Unless you are good friends with the guy who runs the tank exchange, it is unlikely you will get a new or nearly new tank.

 

[opiate82]

I dunno, I have a Bayou Burner and even with the short-filled exchange tanks I'm still getting at least five 60 minute boils on 5 gallon batches. I tried to use the spinny adjustment thingy and gave up trying, I think it is mostly open now. I generally go full blast to get the boil going then keep a pretty vigorous boil, as high as I can keep the flame w/o excessive foaming or boil-overs. It can be windy here to and I don't do much to block that.

I will note that I heat all of my strike and sparge water inside on the gas stove, so I don't use any propane doing that.

I kind of skimmed the thread so maybe I missed it, but have you checked all your connections with something like windex to make sure you don't have any leaks?

 

[sachsebrewer]

In terms of using bg12 burners, I have 2 of them on my brew stand and I think 2.5 to 3 inches between top if burner to pot bottom is ideal, mine are 3 inches.

 

[newnick]

The regulators make a difference too on how well these burners perform.
You need a low pressure regulator for the small banjo style burners.
You also have to open the tank before opening the regulator for it to work correctly.