Using 2 pots to boil a Brewer's Best kit

i'm not sure exactly how to adjust your hop schedule but i do know that more volume boiled=more hop utilization, so it's good that you're boiling as much as possible. i would split them up proportionally but it shouldn't really make too much of a difference if you're mixing them back together in the same fermenter. as for extract, LME is fine to work with but DME foams up like crazy if you're not careful. you may want to keep a 3rd pot around in case you need somewhere to put the wort as it foams up.
i would start with the DME at the beginning of the boil and then add in the LME later. In my limited experience, LME darkens a bit more easily, so adding it 30-15 mins to go in the boil should work, it's really just a matter of preference as to what color you're going for.
as far as shaking it up, that would be a good way to aerate the wort. just to be safe, I would do that before pitching the yeast. good luck!

 

I apologize for not answering your actual questions but if I were you I'd just do smaller batches.

 

You are correct...wort volume does limit your IBUs. So I would split the bittering hops (and all hops) proportionally between your two pots. If 2/3 of your wort goes into the bigger pot, I'd put 2/3 of the hops there and 1/3 in the other.

 

You are way over thinking this... Go to the store, buy a turkey fryer (strictly for brewing) and have fun doing full wort boils outside or in your garage.

If you don't want to spend the money on the fryer then just boil as much as you can in 1 pot on your stove and top off in the fermenter. It's hard to tell with the sheet you provided as the Brewer's Best sheets don't tell you what the bittering and aroma hops are and the AA% will play huge into the calculation. I use HopVille.com to plug in recipes to see how they will be effected by my full wort boil and can usually save some hops from recipes like Brewer's Best kits since they don't take into consideration full wort boils.

Splitting your wort will totally throw the hop utilization in the air. Maybe use HopVille.com to plug into what you'll have in each pot if you really want to split things up.

 

Splitting the hops proportionally will give the same utilization as one big batch assuming same total boiloff (and thus same total wort volume).

 

I always split my boils. In my case, I divide the wort evenly, about 3.5 gallons in a 5-gallon pot and 3.5 gallons in a 7 gallon pot. I batch sparge and split both the first and second runnings among each of the pots so they have approximately the same concentration. For good measure, I move some wort back and forth between the pots, but that is probably overkill.

I bring both pots up to a boil on my stove top. Because my burners don't put out the same BTU, one pot gets to boil first and maintains a more rigorous boil and has a slightly higher boil off. The differences are not sufficient to concern me.

I typically wait until both pots have been boiling for ~30 minutes before making 90 min hop additions. This mostly has to do with my boil off rate -- it helps ensure that I will have the right volume; my boil tends to be 120 min long.

For hopping, I simply split the hops evenly. I used to not have a scale for weighing hops; I would use pellet hops and eyeball it (~ half a 1-oz bag is ~half an ounce, etc).

By the time I get to the 15 min mark, there is sufficient boil off that I can easily combine my worts in the 7 gallon kettle. They are hot enough that my power burner can maintain the boil of the 5.5-6 or so gallons; hop additions after this point obviously don't need to be split. I also immerse my chiller in the larger pot at this point.

Prior to owning the 7 gallon pot (it's an aluminum turkey fryer), I used 3 pots of 5, 3, and 2 gallons. It was a little trickier to split hops porportionally among three kettles, but the eyeball approach served me well. It was also trickier to deal with boil times and boil off rates. During this three kettle era, I had an electric stove with three really different burners. It was sort of a pain, but when you live in n. MN, when the temp is -30 deg F outside with a -45 windchill, you still find a way to brew beer.

ADVICE: I think you should try the technique -- managing two kettles is not a big deal. Try to boil as much wort as you can and dilute the remainder. Try to keep the proportions in mind when splitting ingredients, but you probably needn't be overly meticulous about it. Let both kettles get to a boil before starting your hop additions so they are in sync, timing wise. The boil off rates of the two kettles might be different, but don't worry about it for your first two kettle brew. If you think it is a problem, you can always try to fix it the next time (for example, by adding water back to one of the kettles during the boil).

FINAL NOTE: It's a little more difficult to retro fit this kind of brew day into software like Beersmith or Promash or Hopville or whatever, but don't worry about. The numbers those programs spit back at you are all approximate anyhow. The important thing is you will make beer, it will be tasty, you will get better at it, and it will be tastier.