First all grain batch last night

[mimo777]

I finished my cooler mash tun on monday night and finally had some time to try it out. I put in 11 lbs of briess 2 row pale malt. The OG came out to 1054 which was 75% by my calculations--which are probably wrong--but I put in too little sparge water the first time and ran another gallon through for good measure. I used northern brewers at 60 and tetnang at 30 and 5 so its another one of those experiments .
Now I know why you guys disparage stovetop brewing. I think I started out with about 6 gallons of wort and it took 1/2 hour to bring it to boil with a towel wrapped around the sides and draped over the top of the brew kettle. Oh and I had my boil-over too, so I got that out of the way.
Would a 1500w heatstick make this process faster? I started at 6:00 heating the strike water and that was a big mess because my thermometer is in centigrade so I had to guesstimate and I think I came a little above 153 degrees. The sparge water was a bit easier because I didn't have to guesstimate the temps to warm the grain and the cooler.
When all was said and done and I chilled the wort, I did a gravity reading and it was 1070! so I put it on the scale and it read 32lbs so I ended up adding a gallon of steam distilled water to the fermenter to bring it up to 5 gallons and to the gravity I expected, lol!
Any suggestions? My tools were a 32qt tamale cooker, 2 8 qt pots, a 52qt mash tun with steel braid, a 20ft wort chiller, and a standard stove top.

 

[david_42]

Another 1500 watts will probably knock 10 minutes off the boil time, otherwise it sounds like you had a good run.

 

[mimo777]

I finally pitched the yeast at 11:45, so it was a long night. Also had a big conversation with the girl I'm dating whilst I was brewing my beer so it was quite a hectic night.

 

[mimo777]

Ok, so couldn't wait. Cracked one open and it is WAY better than the extract batch that I finished over the weekend that was aged for over a month. Way better than that batch at 3 weeks, and this puppy has been in the process since 8/27/10! I hope I can wait till the traditional 6 weeks with this stuff. I have a few of my extract batch put aside, so I am going to compare with friends this weekend. I guess my palate isn't sophisticated enough because i don't taste the green...

 

[mimo777]

So IOW drinkable in 13 days with natural carbonation.

 

[jaobrien6]

Now I know why you guys disparage stovetop brewing. I think I started out with about 6 gallons of wort and it took 1/2 hour to bring it to boil with a towel wrapped around the sides and draped over the top of the brew kettle. Oh and I had my boil-over too, so I got that out of the way.
Would a 1500w heatstick make this process faster?

Personally I don't think 30 minutes is bad for 6 gallons of wort on the stove. Yes, a heatstick would definitely cut some time off it, not sure how much exactly. I brew on my gas stove with a 1500W heatstick and the combo works very well. I have to usually turn the stove down to medium or so after I achieve a boil, and can still maintain a very vigorous boil.

 

[mimo777]

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