I’m guessing a few folks have seen this. Some of you may even have one. It’s insanely inexpensive, but it is worth it? Is 58K BTUs enough to get the boil going? Looks like the brackets holding the pot it comes with would easily comes off, meaning you could use this with just about any kettle.
Just looking for thoughts/opinions…
Thanks in advance,
D
I bought this one:
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202038907/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053
I have done two 6.5 gallon boils so far with no problems. The third try I ran out of propane right at the start of the boil - went to stove top and was able to finish without too much trouble.
Well, I bought a similar one last year as an extra burner just to have around. I knew the timer thing wouldn’t survive 10 minutes after unpacking. Took me a while taking the whole darn thing apart, but I got it back together minus all the stupid safety “features” so you don’t have to reset that darn timer every 12 minutes (I had to get “creative”).
Was probably more work than I wanted to do for an el Cheepo burner, but now it works right.
I you don’t feel like modding it , you’ll soon find out what a pain our nanny state has become.
My vote, if money’s tight and you feel you can mod it safely, go for it. Else, save your pennies and get a real burner.
First off, welcome to the forum
Secondly, I looked at your link and the link the above poster replied with what I noticed right away was the very small “horn” on the burner this tells me without looking that inside the windshield is probably a very small burner unit. you and I cannot see from the web whats inside the shield but I would bet better than 90% the unit looks like this link:
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/cast ... 0-btu.htmlYou would ask is that bad or good.
My feeling is that its not terrible but it could be better. The reason I say this is because you have little more than a stove top flame ring with slightly more output. Whereas the large burner rings do not concentrate heat to one small area of the kettle, the flames are spread all across the bottom of the kettle not just a 2"-3" circumference. So outside of just having more BTU’s you have the better efficiency of the flame spread across the whole surface so their is no “deadspace” under the kettle in which to lose some of the heat you just applied to the center and you are not using the whole 100-200,000 BTU’s I own a low profile banjo burner and very rarely do I have it turned up past half of its capacity and I can run four 7.5 gallon boils (average 5.25 gallon to fermenter batch)
and still have some propane in a 20# tank. Plus when and if I do step up to 10 gallon or more batches I do have the burner to handle a 15 gallon plus kettle depending on situation. Here is the burner ring on the better units just for perspective:
Honestly your paying $40 for a 30q Aluminum kettle and a thermometer.
The burner ring in those units cost around $15 and you can find something even cheaper than these
two examples if you do want a bargain. IE: look for the 55k style burner without the aluminum kettle, hanger, thermometer etc…
Have a good one.
