Quite a boil off

[JerD]

I finally boiled some water just to see how much I'm boiling off from my kettle. It's the 60 qt stainless I picked up at Cabelas. I started with 6 gallons and after a one hour boil and an overnight sit to cool down, I was left with 3 and 3/4 gallons. I'm guessing that might be one reason why my bitters turned out more like a malty brown ale. Me thinks I'll make me a keggle.

 

[Catt22]

Why not just turn down the burner some to reduce the boil off rate? Seems like that would be the obvious solution. You only need to slow it enough to reduce the boil off by one gallon or so to be in the right range and that shouldn't be hard to do.

 

[JerD]

I wouldn't want to slow down the boil. As volume decreases, I do adjust the burner to keep the boil the same. Ultimately, the pot is just pretty wide (16") providing a whole lot of surface area. I'm thinking that I'll make a keggle and use the kettle as a MLT instead of the rubbermaid.

 

[springer]

You don't need a new pot ,start your boil with more water to get your final volume.

 

[Catt22]

A keggle won't be much smaller in diameter than the kettle you are using. There's no advantage to boiling at a very high rate and sometimes it can be detrimental to the beer resulting in excessive caramelization. You could add more water mid-boil if the losses are too great or at the beginning as suggested above. I think you would like your kettle better than a keggle. I have both and if I had to choose between them I would pick the kettle hands down. Keggles are heavy and cumbersome. They are popular mostly because they are large and relatively cheap compared to most SS kettles.

 

[springer]

Catt is right I started with a 30 qt pot moved to a Keggle thought it was great.. Then I bought a 60 qt pot and picked up a 120 qt pot both aluminum and I prefer them . Light easy to move around heats up much faster.

A good rolling boil is all that is needed This is the 60qt pot its way more than 16" in diameter and I get about 1-1/2 gallon boil off in an hour

Get about 1 gallon boil off on this one because it has a smaller diameter and is taller