Suprising -

[Thirsty Boy]

I have a new brewpot - 60L aluminium jobbie. Never used it.

But I am going to use it at the G&G demo on Saturday - so I thought I better run a batch of water through it to clean it out and build up the oxidise layer - so the G&G brew doesn't taste all funky, metallic and like whatever the hell the factory last left in there.

Here's what surprised me

First:

50L of water into this pot and I decided I would just bung it on the kitchen stove... it covers all 4 burners!! I figure the poor old stove hasn't got a chance and that I will settle for "very hot" water rather than boiling. But bugger me - 45 mins later (lid on) it boiling away merrily... two back burners off - still boiling in a fashion that I would be happy with as my "boil" - 3 burners off... and the thing still keeps actively boiling with it's lid on - it dropped down to a simmer with the lid off. But just two burners kept it boiling quite well even with the lid off.

So - this just goes to reinforce my opinion that a lot of home brewers are using burners that are needlessly overpowered. As long as you aren't in an all powered hurry - two lousy burners on your gas stove are enough to sufficiently boil 50 damn litres !!! Any extra power just speeds things up and then wastes gas.

Second:

Bloody hell - that much water cools down slowly. I am on afternoon shift, so left for work at about 1:10 this afternoon - I turned off the gas on the 50L at about 1:00pm. When I got home from work - I went to empty out and dry the pot... and damned if I didn't nearly burn myself on the lid. It was still at 62C !!
And this is at 10:30pm - nine and a half hours after the heat was turned off. In an uninsulated aluminium pot.

So the no-chillers out there - this thing was still churning out pasteurization units after more than 8 hours .. and it must have been in alpha acid isomerisation territory for a good 4-5 hours of that. No conclusions - just information to consider.

I thought it would still be warm.. but it was still way hotter than my hot tap will push out.

Also - my cream ale has turned out to be surprisingly good.. I have had a couple. Sorry if this post is silly.

TB

 

[clean brewer]

Not silly TB, useful info for some....

Kitchen is the same mate, anything that is big in Volume(veal stock) that has to be cooled quickly to avoid contamination needs to be broken down into smaller volumes to chill quick enough to ensure less risk of contamination....

And aluminium pots work very well, we easily Boil 40ltr pots on 1 burner on the stove no worries... And quickly too...

:icon_cheers: CB

 

[Barley Belly]

Doesn't surprise me.

I started AG with my 40L Alu pot across two burners of a gas camping stove

Now I've upgraded to my Natural Gas BBQ wok burner :beerbang:

No boil probs here

 

[beers]

I use a kitchen stove for all my beers. 2x burners can get a 25L rolling boil going nicely. Good to hear that if I plan on upgrading to double batches I should be ok.... not sure how the girl feels about that though

 

[Fents]

whats you're cream ale recipe TB?

 

[QldKev]

I would also think the stove would work excellent. When you consider there are a lot of people BIAB with the urns, which are only 2400w. A stove hot plates can be anywhere fro m700 to 1200w each.

But I can get my BIAB up to 69 in 15minutes with LPG



QldKev

 

[Bribie G]

I totally agree with your no chill comments. On the one disastrous occasion I no chilled in the urn, it was still too hot to touch the next morning. You would think that a metal container would cool down quicker than a plastic one, so that's surprising.
Using a "skinny" Willow Jerry the wort is usually at around 35 degrees by the next morning - I'm an afternoon / evening brewer - then I pop it into the fridge to drag it down to pitching temperature, usually around mid afternoon. I think it's probably a surface to volume ratio thingy.


:icon_offtopic: Oh and I can get my strike water up to 69 degrees NOW