Help with stove top AG idea.

[zanemoseley]

Here's what I currently have:

4 gallon SS pot
5.5 gallon SS pot

I have been doing PM's on the stove top with DB's technique with success. My last batch I was able to boil 5 gallons in the 5.5 gallon pot with foam control drops. I would consider this a full boil however I don't know if its technically a full boil because I top off with boiling water from a separate pot at several points throughout the 60 minute boil.

I would like to make a cheap 5 or 10 gallon MLT cooler to use with my existing pots on the stove, no additional equipment purchases.

My question is can I mash and sparge with a total volume of about 6 gallons after absorption? This would allow me to boil roughly 5 gallons in the main pot with the hops and then I'd leave the other gallon boiling or near boiling in the 4 gallon pot and top off the 5.5 gallon pot at various intervals of the boil to keep hop utilization up. I have notice most people start with 7.5+ gallons so I'm not sure how well my method would work. I would also like to note that I don't want to mess with splitting my hops between the two pots, I hope the 5 gallon boil is large enough to not mess with this.

From what little I know about AG one question I have is when I heat the batch sparge water in the 4 gallon pot and dump into the MLT is this going to cause oxidization?

 

[zanemoseley]

Actually the more I read the more I think I can get this to work. Looking at the Brew365 calculator I can see where 8 gallons of water can turn into roughly 6 gallons pre-boil due to equipment loss and grain absorption. I could boil 5 gallons in the main pot with the hops and boil the other gallon in a separate pot and use this for topping off the main pot. I couldn't image this would mess up hop utilization that much.

 

[Nugent]

I have a similar problem - two 5 gal. pots, stove top brewing and the desire to brew 6 gal. through a full-wort boil. Here's what I do:

Mash and sparge ~7-7.5 gal. of wort into a big ol' brewing bucket. Then I ladle ~3.75 gal. into each pot and divide the hops in half. The wort is still nice and hot as I have my mash tun and bucket wrapped in a aluminiumized wrap, so most of the heat is kept. I have one of those new-fangled ceramic top stoves that seems to have enough juice to get the boil going in a short period of time. Then, I brew as normal.

So far, so good. Brewed an English IPA with Perle and EKG on Saturday and ended up with 5.57 gal. of sweet, hoopy wort. The krausen is 3" high as we speak.

It's not ideal (the limits of living in a condo), but I've made three brilliant AG batches so far.

I'd really appreciate any feedback or advice from anyone.

Good Luck.

 

[wilserbrewer]

I occasionally max out the capacity of my kettles, ( a 28 qt. and a 44 qt ). I have boiled the last runnings in a smaller stock pot and used that to top off the kettle during the boil without problems. People aslo split the wort and hops, and boil in two kettles as well. While not ideal, this should work fine IMO.

 

[hardrain]

I've just started looking at this. I made a cheap tun yesterday for about $50 and it works great, but even with two burners on the stove I can barely get 5 gal rolling. I've thought about boiling four gal in the main pot and 1.5 in a second, but:

(1)I only have one way to cool the wort, so I need to have all of it in one pot when I end the boil

(2)I don't know enough about oxidation and would be hesitant to be dumping gal's of water to combine them

I suspect that I would split the wort up 3gal + 3 gal in two pots then try to slowly combine them as I get some of the water to boil down, but that also seems like a lot of work.

 

[Nomad]

I occasionally max out the capacity of my kettles, ( a 28 qt. and a 44 qt ). I have boiled the last runnings in a smaller stock pot and used that to top off the kettle during the boil without problems. People aslo split the wort and hops, and boil in two kettles as well. While not ideal, this should work fine IMO.

I do the same. I went all grain to save money and control the fermentability of my wort. It's worked fine for me. Beer is very forgiving!

 

[malkore]

you'll be better off evenly splitting the wort between the two pots

5.5 gallon pot will not contain 5 gallons of wort when the hot break occurs...it'll boil over like a volcano.

 

[zanemoseley]

Actually with Fermcaps I can safely boil 5 gallons in the 5.5 gallon pot from the start, cool ain't it.