Question for those doing AG on ceramic/glass electric ranges...

[zanemoseley]

I'm thinking of doing AG brewing on my new Frigidaire flat top (glass or ceramic) electric range, it seems to have a pretty good sized burner at 11" in diameter and heats up very quickly. I was wondering if you guys though I'd have success boiling 5-6 gallons of water on this range. I would test it but I only have a 4 gallon pot currently.

I guess worst case is I could do AG and have to top off 1-2 gallons. What would be the immediate impact of topping off instead of doing a 100% boil? Is it just not quite good of a quality beer?

All input on the flat top glass/ceramic ranges would be great to hear about.

 

[nukebrewer]

I don't have a glass/ceramic stove, myself, but there's a thread that was posted fairly recently about someone who screwed up a flat top stove by trying to use a big brew pot on it.

 

[sirsloop]

I have a hard enough time trying to boil 6 gallons with two natural gas burners on a heavy duty pot... let alone on an electric range. I've tried to get around it but a turkey fryer cookin propane is THE HOT SETUP (literally)

 

[dontman]

I have only heard bad things, really bad things, about trying to put too big of a pot on glasstops. You can't really do partial boil AG because it relies on boil off to get down to proper volume.

Look into Deathbrewer's stovetop AG method. This allows for two 5 gallon pots and could work for you.

 

[zanemoseley]

Well I was looking at DB's AG thread, that's where I thought of brewing AG on the stove. His strike water pot is I think 3 gallons but then once he sparges it and combines the two pots I think the volume gets to about 5+ gallons which would be about 45lbs with the weight of the pot and would still leave me topping off some. I set a 5 gal bucket of equal weight on my stove last night as a test and the stove didn't seem to flex or have a problem but extended weight with adding the heat my cause a problem. I'd hate to break my month old stove. I may just stick with partial mashes for a while on the stove as they are only 3-4 gallons or so.

 

[IowaHarry]

I do it but it has to be in two pots. Can't bring 6.5 gallons to a boil at once.

In AG there is no topping up. There is boiling down. A 5 gallon batch may start with 7 gallons or more of thin wort which must be boiled off to concentrate to the proper SG.

 

[gabeweisz]

I've got a Frigidaire flat top stove that I've used a lot - but it takes 45 minutes to boil 3 gallons and I don't think it would boil 5-6. That's why I got a turkey fryer. That and the boil overs.

 

[jkarp]

I'm thinking of doing AG brewing on my new Frigidaire flat top (glass or ceramic) electric range, it seems to have a pretty good sized burner at 11" in diameter and heats up very quickly. I was wondering if you guys though I'd have success boiling 5-6 gallons of water on this range. I would test it but I only have a 4 gallon pot currently.

I guess worst case is I could do AG and have to top off 1-2 gallons. What would be the immediate impact of topping off instead of doing a 100% boil? Is it just not quite good of a quality beer?

All input on the flat top glass/ceramic ranges would be great to hear about.

I've got a GE glass-top stove and can tell you it's ALL in the pot. It must have an absolutely, perfectly, flat bottom or you'll have horrible heat transfer. Look for a pot that's got a clad bottom. Those work best by far. I've got a 3 gallon one I use for heating sparge water, decoctions, etc. Prior to building my electric kettle, I used my 28 qt aluminum turkey fryer pot that had a very flat bottom and was easily able to boil 5 gallons.

 

[craigd]

In AG there is no topping up. There is boiling down. A 5 gallon batch may start with 7 gallons or more of thin wort which must be boiled off to concentrate to the proper SG.

I disagree. I have done a 4G slightly concentrated AG that was topped off to 5G and I know others do this for stovetop as well. It works best on lower gravity beers though... It can be done but you have to adjust a little for IBUs.

 

[zman]

I have a glass top electric stove and I have used it to boil water, but not the wort itself. I have a 5gal and a 2 gal pot and I use both to heat the water for my mash and my sparging . I now do a mixture because my new 5g pot had a reaction to the stove and started to develop a little bit of rust. I took care of that with some Bartenders Friend. Now I use the burner for the 5g pot and the stove for the 2g. No issues so far

 

[onecolumbyte]

I've got a GE glass-top stove and can tell you it's ALL in the pot. It must have an absolutely, perfectly, flat bottom or you'll have horrible heat transfer. Look for a pot that's got a clad bottom. Those work best by far. I've got a 3 gallon one I use for heating sparge water, decoctions, etc. Prior to building my electric kettle, I used my 28 qt aluminum turkey fryer pot that had a very flat bottom and was easily able to boil 5 gallons.

+1000.

With the sealed top stoves the pot *MUST* touch the glass top or you will not get enough heat into the pot to boil it. A flat bottow sounds easy but check your pots with a straight edge and you'll find they're not very flat. Karp is right, a clad bottom is about the only way to ensure a flat bottom and those pots are EXPENSIVE. Many pots are actually desiged with a curved bottow for improved strength (esp thin wall SS pots, even alum turkey frier pots).

I've tried it, now I have a turkey frier. BEST $30 I EVER SPENT.

 

[zanemoseley]

Well I finally tried an almost 4 gallon test boil in the fairly cheap thin walled SS pot and I got 120F tap water to boil in 20 minutes. This gives me hope that I could do a 6-6.5 gallon boil in clad pot (like a megapot) but I really would hate to spend $110 on a 8 gallon pot and not be able to boil it. What do you guys think.

My in laws have a turkey burner so I may try to fill the cheap turkey pot up with 6 gallons and test boil this before dropping the cash for a nice pot.

 

[dontman]

One issue is that when you go into the bigger pots the circumference grows. This is when my stove starting having problems keeping up.

 

[zanemoseley]

Yeah the 4 gallon pot I tested is 11" in diameter where the 8 gallon pot is 14" which would hang some off the sides of the 11" burner.

 

[carl spakler]

You can calculate/estimate the time taken to boil if you know the BTUs of the stove, the starting water temp and volume.

I did this a while back and determined I could likely get my 15,000 BTU burner to boil the necessary volume for a full boil batch albeit slowly, but have not sprung for a larger brew pot to confirm.

 

[zanemoseley]

According to Frigidaire my large element is a 12" producing 2700w which I used an online calculator to convert this to about 9200 BTU's. So what do you guys think?

 

[dontman]

If this is an accurate comparison then 9500 would probably be too low. My outdoor burner is 185000 BTUs. The minimum I have seen for outdoor burners that work is 65000. And my gas range has a 28000 BTU super burner. The gas range is a little lackluster in its performance.

OTOH, there are canning elements that you can put on electric ranges that up the power and more importantly that can support the weight. The first time I tried to do a full boil on my electric range I nearly destroyed it in a scary way. The element kind of collapsed under the 50+ pounds of the wort. It was never really the same after that. I think I crushed its spirit.

Edit: Fogot what thread this was. The above paragraph is not relevent.

To be honest I don't know that these BTU measurements are good for comparison. Electric ranges seem to be able to direct their btu's more efficiently into the pot where a lot of gas btus drift up into the air. Before I upgraded my gas jets my 9000 BTU gas burners were just not as quick at heating a tea pot as my electric range.

 

[wilserbrewer]

New stove + stove top brewing = unhappy swmbo

For me, I would keep that new stove new, propane or heatsticks would be my answer. While you certainly can brew on a kitchen stove, I feel it is beyond the intended use it was designed for.

 

[dontman]

New stove + stove top brewing = unhappy swmbo

For me, I would keep that new stove new, propane or heatsticks would be my answer. While you certainly can brew on a kitchen stove, I feel it is beyond the intended use it was designed for.

True words friend. I got my new gas stove for X'mas. I did one batch on it and even though the stove was my gift to me not to my wife I still panicked when I saw the disaster area after the boil. The little tiny specks that splashed out during the boil had plenty of time to become harder than the ceramic that they were on. It took me about 3 days of soaking with wet rags and all manner of cleansers to get those specks off. For my next batch I had the Bayou Classic burner waiting.

 

[EvilTOJ]

The problem with ceramic tops is just that; the top is ceramic. If it's going to break, you won't see any flexing at all before it breaks, and believe me it will shatter just like a plate when it does. I've seen it happen with a ceramic top stove (luckily not mine) and those are NOT cheap to replace.

Boiling in two pots sounds like the way to go, it'll distribute the weight easily enough. +1 on the clad bottom pot, it works well with my ceramic top stove. I use my stove to heat my sparge water and do the boil outside on the turkey fryer. I have a thin-walled 5 gallon pot and a clad bottomed 5 gallon pot, and the clad one does heat up quicker than the thinwalled pot does.

 

[zanemoseley]

Well I'm just going to have to be content with doing PM brews on the stove. Walmart has 5.5 gallon clad bottomed SS pots for about $50 which I'll probably get to go along with my 4 gal. With this I should be able to mash and sparge on the stove and do a 4- 4.5 gallon boil which is relatively close to a full boil if I top off throughout the boil to compensate for evaporation.

If I decide to go AG then I'll just probably do the outdoor burner/pot combo..

 

[Sudz]

Well I'm just going to have to be content with doing PM brews on the stove. Walmart has 5.5 gallon clad bottomed SS pots for about $50 which I'll probably get to go along with my 4 gal. With this I should be able to mash and sparge on the stove and do a 4- 4.5 gallon boil which is relatively close to a full boil if I top off throughout the boil to compensate for evaporation.

If I decide to go AG then I'll just probably do the outdoor burner/pot combo..

We have a ceramic top Frigidaire which will handle 3 gal boils. However, it takes an hour to reach a boil and when cooking wort only manages a feable boil. It just wasn't getting the job done as it should have although I've made some good beers on it.

Moving to a cheap turkey fryer was a significant improvement. I've since have moved up again to a Hurricane cooker modified for NG. This is one aspect of this hobby... there's always room for better toys...

 

[chefmike]

I changed out my mom's flat top stove because she does a lot of canning and long cooks and her instruction manual specifically warned against this with the flat top. I then used it for a while while remodelling a house. It worked (I was not worried about cracking it). But....

Propane burners are so much less expensive than divorces and breakups.....

 

[k1v1116]

I have a glass top stove, and while I recently switched to a propane burner for convenience it does work it just takes forever to heat up. I can bring 7 gallons to a boil in 15 minutes with my propane burner on my stove it takes 1.5 hours to bring 6.5 gallons to a slightly less than rolling boil. But it does work and it can make good beer it just lengthens an already long brew day, which isn't necessarily a bad thing if your having fun.

 

[dagrar]

I switch to brewing 3 gallon batches in the winter. The stove handles the 5 gallons pot with 3.5 to 4 gallons of wort in it with out to much trouble. When the weather breaks about 30 outside I switch to the 10 gallon pot and propane burner and do full 5 gallon batches. I did try the first time to boil 4 gallons in the 10 gallon pot on the stove so I'd have alot of headroom for the foam but I the wort would not come to a boil. I then put in the smaller diameter 5g pot and life was good again.

 

[zanemoseley]

Well I bought the 5.5 gallon clad bottom pot and probably put 5 gallons in it. My stove must have some balls compared to some flat tops because it brought 115 degree tap water to rolling boil in 30 minutes. It will probably be able to bring sparged wort to a boil in about 20 minutes. This should make for some wonderful PM brews. Also if I do top offs for evaporation a few times during the boil I should be able to maintain right at a 5 gallon full boil.

I also didn't notice any signs of distress from the stove top during the boil or afterward. I also skimmed through the manual and saw nothing about a weight limit however common sense would tell you there must be one however I feel it would have to be much more than the roughly 45-50 pounds I'm putting on it. I think if I were to try boiling much more it would get really hard to boil anyway.

 

[Idlehanz]

Well, this thread certainly worries me. My landlord brought us a brand new stove after 3 of 4 burners quit working on the old one. It's a flat top Kenmore. It has a turbo-boil burner feature, and another fairly large burner, along with 3 small ones. I was excited. Now I'm a bit worried I'm going to have to spring for an outdoor burner. At least we got a new stove I guess.


EDIT

I just realized this is in the all grain thread, and I mostly do partials. I'll try heating about three gallons tonight and see how it works out as an experiment.

 

[rpfuror]

There are a couple people that already said it, but I will repeat it...

It all about the surface area of the pot....

I have done AG batched on my flat top stove (when I had to because of weather) and it works perfectly.

I use a Blichman 10 Gallon boiler maker and a 4 gallon High grade SS pot (for sparge water)

Here the process:

- I mash in an Igloo cooler and take my first running into my Boilermaker.

- I put the Boilermaker on high heat on a 12" burner (if you look at the bottom of the boilermaker the base in just about 12 " before it rolls up to a larger OD).

- I batch sparge with the water heated in my 4 gallon pot for ~15 mins. Right about the time I take my second running I'm just about at boil in the boilermaker.

Honestly, I can't get much better, as far as timing on propane, but it is sure hot in my kitchen when I get the full batch up to a boil.

I have done up to 7 gallons pre-boil batches this way and 90 min boils no problem.

One word of caution that I haven't seen mentioned....

You will need good ventilation above your stove. There will be alot of condensation when you boiling down the wort. Even with my vent fan on high I still have to keep a clean rag around to wipe down little drops of it from getting everywhere.

 

[wonderbread23]

I do all my boils on a ceramic top electric range. It takes about 30 minutes, but I routinely get a rolling boil of up to 7.5 gallons or wort. Anything bigger (higher gravity requiring long boils) get split into two pots. The main problem I have is controlling the steam coming off (it overwhelms my whimpy microwave built it hood).

 

[Joshua618]

I used a 10 gallon Megapot on top of flat top stove and never had a problem. I supplemented the stove with a 2000 watt heatstick and could easily boil 8+ gallons.