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Full volume boil questions

Northern Brewer General
#1

I’ve been brewing a few partial volume boils for my first few batches. I am limited to a flat top electric stove with 4 burners, 2 big, 2 small and my aluminum 8 gallon kettle. I am currently boiling about 6 gals of water right now to see how well it will boil, and it is rolling, only with the lid half way on. Is this okay? I’ve heard of the texas two step method, but I don’t have two kettles and I want to stay away from splitting the recipe. I’d rather leave the lid completely off but once I take the lid completely off, the boil slows down to a trickle. I am going to brew a batch of Jamil’s Evil Twin Red IPA and I’d like to make this one my first full volume boil. Any help is appreciated.

:cheers:

#2

Not sure what your budget looks like but the better quality the brew kettle the better the heat transfer. If you are going to full (5gal) boils I would suggest a better kettle and/or a propane burner.

#3

I believe the majority of “better quality” cookware have an aluminum disk sandwiched between layers of SS/Copper because the AL transfers heat better.

Many of use use AL pots that cam with our turkey fryers because they are lighter in weight than a comparable SS pot. And we are cheap, I mean frugal. :shock:

The greater volume you can boil the better. If it’s only 5 gallons, do that. It’s better than 2.5 gallons.

#4

Does it have to be an even number like 5 gallons or can i use like 3or 4 or as much as i can and use cold water for the rest

#5

If you don’t brew in quarter fractions of a gallon, the beer will not turn out correctly.

:lol:

#6

You want to keep the lid off the kettle, and you want to make sure you keep a rolling boil. I doubt that upgrading your kettle would help much, the problem is your stove. I would recommend you brew smaller batches. A 2 1/2 gallon batch is easy to figure out recipes for, just divide all the ingredients by two, but any batch size your equipment can handle will work.

#7

They actually make small 2 burner propane stoves that you can use indoors. I have a 5.5 gallon SS pot and usually start with about 4.5 gallons of water and try really hard to not get it to overboil. It only overboiled once out of 5 batches. You most definately want to keep the lid off during the boil, a lot of biproducts of the boil that you don’t want in the beer will evaporate and leave your wort this way.

#8

okay thanks for the help. I usually leave the lid half on and the evaporation and boiloff are not a problem. It keeps alot of the heat in and gave me a nice rolling boil. The problem is that I am in my dorm room and I can’t exactly use propane and I’m trying to make the most of what I have

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