BG14 Boil Time?

[Apoxbrew]

So I'm working on my 3 tier stand still and am to the point of mounting burners. I have 3 bg14's.

I think I have it dialed in as good as it's going to get, but wanted to check.

I did a test boil with 5 gallons of 53f water and was able to reach rolling boil in 20 minutes in my 25gal mega pot. Calculates out to 19,893 btu/hr in the kettle. They claim the output is 210k btu... so not sure if that's a good transfer or not.

This was with the burner at 3.5" below the pot. Any closer and I get flame spill out up the sides of the pot. It's also with the burner as dialed in as I could get which is about 1" high blue cones with no yellow.

I'm thinking of going with the 3.5" mounting distance from bottom of kettle and then adding a windscreen with a 1" gap left between bottom of kettle to allow for airflow. Will also have hole for lighting.

All that said, what do you all think? Good? Or do I need to dial it in more / make any adjustments?

Thanks!

 

[Apoxbrew]

bump...

 

[outside92129]

Have a look at this thread. He conducted a water bake-off of both 4" and 2" gaps between keggle and burner. Note that the 4" gap was designed for regular pots (per mfg) and not for keggles.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/modding-kab4-6-a-259864/

 

[Apoxbrew]

thanks! excellent thread. that kind of confirms my findings... i can see getting good results with a 2" gap on a keggle with it's domed bottom. holds in the flame well in that curtain created by the keg bottom.

 

[worstbrewing]

Sorry to piggy-back off of this but since these are built for Bayou Classic kettles, are there any benefits to modifying them if you're using those kettles? As in, will you get any better rates, etc. All the mods I see tend to be for keggles, which I understand, just been debating pulling the trigger between the KAB4 and the Blichmann floor standing burner but if the KAB4 will do the same with little/no mods that would be nice, just haven't heard many results from people using kettles (I have 82qt Bayou Classic kettles fyi)

 

[outside92129]

worst- the 2" modification are specific to keggles, the mfg says the defautl gap on the kab4 is for flat bottomed pots/kettles. So you should be good to go out of the box.