Kettle for Apartment Brewing

[DrumForHire]

So, I live in an apartment and brew (exclusively extract so far) on the propane stove. I recently inherited a bunch of quality brewing equipment, which includes an 8 gallon Megapot and a 5 gallon nameless stainless steel kettle with a ball valve attached. I'm going to store the Megapot for when I am able to move into a house and brew outside, but I'm wondering if it would be feasible to brew with the 5 gallon kettle on my little propane stove.

I brewed yesterday and it took a lot to bring the wort to a boil and that was in a 4 gallon kettle. I don't know if the 5 gallon kettle would be harder to bring to a boil with the same volume of wort. If it's more difficult, I'll probably stick with the old 4 gallon kettle, but it'd be nice if I could utilize the valve. So, any thoughts?

 

[McKnuckle]

I would think the volume of water will be the deciding factor as to whether your stove can effectively boil it, not the air volume inside the kettle. It'll more easily boil 1 gallon in a 10 gallon kettle than 3 gallons in a 4 gallon kettle. This propane thing is the main cooking fixture in your apartment?

 

[DrumForHire]

This propane thing is the main cooking fixture in your apartment?

I should make sure I write the correct terms. It's a gas stove (shouldn't have said propane). Just a standard, GE gas stove, so it's not too complicated. I just know that it won't get the kettle as hot as an outdoor burner might.

The main reason I question it is that I don't know if the surface area of the bigger kettle will slow down how fast it heats. I remember a friend once mentioning that when he first got into homebrewing he bought a huge pot as his kettle, and he couldn't get it to boil on his stove even if it was just 2 gallons of water in it.

 

[McKnuckle]

All I can say is to try it. I have a gas stove also, and can fairly easily boil 4-5 gallons in an 8 gallon pot on the biggest burner. It's not as ballsy as my propane burner that I use outdoors, but it certainly works - and I use it all winter for brewing indoors. Not knowing the size of your stove, one can't predict. Give it a shot!

 

[WayFrae]

If the pot will fit over two burners on your stove it will help you boil faster. A full volume boil will take your beer to the next level especially if you brew hoppy beers since the hop utilization will be greatly increased.

 

[beergolf]

Before I got a bigger pot and a burner I used to brew on a GE gas stove. I had a 5 gallon pot and the limit was about 4 gallons for the boil. I used to do all grain full boil batches by splitting up the wort. 4 gallons in one pot and about 2 1/2 in another 3 gallon pot. It worked quite well. In fact if the weather is nasty and I want to brew I still occasionally do that.

 

[TexasWine]

I BIAB in the kitchen on my gas stovetop and most often use my 9 gallon bayou classic. My boils will typically start between 7.25 & 7.5 gallons. I straddle two burners to get it up to boiling and kill the smaller burner once it's there. This past weekend I used this immersion heater in addition to the burners and went from mash to boiling very quickly.

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My advice would be to keep the 8 gallon kettle out of storage and use it on the stove top with an immersion heater, or two if you have separate circuits you can plug into. I think you can make this work.

I would also recommend starting with BIAB. One, it's less cost for entry into all grain. And two, it's about the simplest process you could imagine. >>> https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f244/biab-brewing-pics-233289/

Once you get the hang of it, you can then decide if you want to spend more money and get more complicated, introducing coolers and whatnot. But for BIAB, all you need to do is buy a bag. Paint strainer bags from Amazon or HD work, but I recommend these >> http://biabbags.webs.com/.

My personal experience has been that I started with BIAB about a year ago and haven't looked back. It works great for kitchen brewing, I have less equipment to store, and it's stinking fast with my brew days taking around 3 hours.

I hope some of this info helps.

 

[Zepth]

+1 to covering 2 burners with 1 pot. I did that a couple times on the electric stovetop.

I'd like to be the first to say that pot quality matters! I have an el-cheapo stock pot from whatever local store had it the cheapest. On the same burner it takes it 2x longer to boil 1/2 the amount as a quality pot. It's only used to hold vorlauf and temporary sparge water vessel.

For me the biggest change I made was deciding to build an e-kettle. It is not a cheap entry price. To be fair, I hadn't even looked at what it would cost for a propane tank, burner, possible stand for burner, but I do know refills aren't cheap. Reason being that my building has a no-propane / gas policy. Massive difference in heat output even compared to bridging 2 burners on the stovetop, I can now boil 13 gallons in less time than it took to get 5 going. Look into it.