New kettle—didn't quite get to boil on stovetop

[TexasWine]

It's natural gas. Last night I "boiled" just one gallon in my new 8 gallon aluminum pot, with the lid on and then partially on. I actually used 3 burners for a while, and it only got up to 210. Granted, I only tried for about a half hour, but Im not sure what the deal is. Does wort boil easier than water?

EDIT: I've had no problem boiling 2.5-3 gallons of wort in my 5 gallon stainless steel pot (using just one burner). Could my problem have something to do with the new pot being aluminum in a much larger size?

Man that is bizarre. I don't understand why it's not boiling. Sure you'll loose more heat because of the larger pot, but not being able to boil one gallon of water seems impossible.

I think I'm out of ideas.

 

[madscientist451]

I have an electric range and shoot for about 4 gallons of wort in the fermenter. I mostly brew in the winter and at night and don't want to be outside brewing.
I have two pots, a 6 gallon and a 3 gallon.
I mash in a 5 gallon cooler and run directly into the brew kettle.
The sparge water is already heated in my smaller pot and I dump that in the cooler, then run the first batch sparge into the kettle, and the kettle goes on the stove with maybe 4.5 gallons of water in it.
My second batch sparge goes into the small pot with about 2 gallons, which I then also put on the stove. I divide my hops by the appropriate amounts, and boil away. After about 30 mins, I've lost some water to evaporation and the small pot is dumped into the large one.
I usually end up with about 4.5 gallons of wort in the pot. I set the pot on the back porch overnight to chill and siphon off 4 gallons of wort to the carboy, leaving behind about 1/2 gallon of trub.
I got the small pot from Walmart for about $12.
I think your specific problem is that your pot geometry is such that its letting go of heat faster than you can add heat.
If the pot was a smaller diameter and taller, perhaps that would help, I don't know if aluminum dissipates heat faster than stainless steel but that could be adding to the problem.
My 6 gallon brew kettle is stainless steel and doesn't look as wide as yours.

 

[purplehaze]

Someone else had a similar issue and was able to figure it out, which is why I posted the link to his thread.

Most of the heat from the burner hits the bottom of the pot and then dissipates. Using the Aluminum flashing retains the heat by forcing it up the sides of the pot. The flashing is very cheap and can be bought at any big box store.

I have modified what he did and use it outside on my propane burners.

A heat stick will work but that would be more expensive and difficult to build than an aluminum skirt.

 

[Coolhand78]

Thanks for this idea. I think I'll try this if it looks like I don't have any other options.

Someone else had a similar issue and was able to figure it out, which is why I posted the link to his thread.

Most of the heat from the burner hits the bottom of the pot and then dissipates. Using the Aluminum flashing retains the heat by forcing it up the sides of the pot. The flashing is very cheap and can be bought at any big box store.

I have modified what he did and use it outside on my propane burners.

A heat stick will work but that would be more expensive and difficult to build than an aluminum skirt.

 

[Devilsnight]

I battled with this for quite awhile. my solution was a new kettle. I had a really nice 4 gal. stainless kettle that I started with. It was really tough to get a rolling boil with 3 gallons of wort. For some reason I decided to buy the el cheapo 5 gallon kettle from my lhbs, it probly weighed half as much (even being bigger in size) My only problem now is worrying about boil over. The difference is night and day. Don't even have to think about putting a lid over it, it gets up and goes.
I searched high and low to find a solution, thought about a stick or propane but that didn't really make sense, hope this helps. It's got something to do with heat transfering through the bottom of the kettle I guess

 

[Brew_G]

It's natural gas. Last night I "boiled" just one gallon in my new 8 gallon aluminum pot, with the lid on and then partially on. I actually used 3 burners for a while, and it only got up to 210. Granted, I only tried for about a half hour, but Im not sure what the deal is. Does wort boil easier than water?

EDIT: I've had no problem boiling 2.5-3 gallons of wort in my 5 gallon stainless steel pot (using just one burner). Could my problem have something to do with the new pot being aluminum in a much larger size?

Any luck?

I have a GE range with a similar setup as yours. For my first brewday with my fairly thin-walled SS 9-gallon pot (this past Saturday), I ended up just using the power boil burner. I did experiment for a few minutes with extending the pot over three burners, but I felt I was losing more heat from the power boil than I was gaining from the other two burners. I got 6.25 gallons of cold tap water up to 163F in 40 minutes, then mashed in. After sparging to get my boil volume (~6.75 gal), my water temp was 151F. I hit the burner and was at a boil 35 minutes later. I had no issues keeping that boil rolling for the remainder.

It's not an ideal situation to have to use a gas range burner for fairly high volumes (though brewing inside on a cold day is nice!), but power burners should do the job.

 

[flars]

"However, 90 minutes later (2 hours total) I could only get the water up to 210, just on the edge of becoming a boil. I even put the lid on (partially), but that barely seemed to help."

At an elevation near 1,000 feet in Sun Prairie, boiling will be less than 212°. Still 90 minutes is a lengthy amount of time.

 

[Coolhand78]

I haven't had time to try a brew yet, but this morning I did post a thread on a SMASH recipe to try for my first biab (thread:First time BIAB, SMASH - Check my recipe before I give it a shot).

I'll report back once I brew. Thanks!