Best Kettle (in your opinion)

5 gallon batches would benefit from an 8-10 gallon pot.

 

You are gold if you have gas...that sounds funny, but what I mean is that gas is cheap and controllable. You should have no problem getting ~ 7 gals up to a boil in less than an hour from cold. Brewing in the kitchen is much nicer in the winter, also. Watch your humidity though if you live in a moist climate. I have a stainless AND Aluminum kettle I have been very happy with (aluminum sandwiched between SS on the bottom for good heat Xfer). I think I paid ~ $80 for a 32 qt.) on sale at a restaurant supply. Measure the distance between your gas burners and make sure any kettle you get has a diameter AT LEAST wider than the distance from the outsides of your burners. This will allow you to straddle 2 burners and really speed things up. Good luck.

 

Most homebrew shops sell the economic kettle and the premium kettle. The difference, aside from optional accessories, is the thickness of the pot. You can brew beer just find in the economic kettles. The thicker pots will heat more evenly and quicker. That's the big difference. I wouldn't use too thin of a pot on a propane burner because you concentrate all the heat in one spot and I've seen people burn through a thin kettle before. However, that isn't an issue for you.

You can buy any pot/kettle to do the trick. You need to look at what size fits on your stove and what your brewing needs are and likely will be in the future. It's almost a certainty that you will want to start doing full boils in the future. If you are going to brew the usual five gallon batch you need at least a seven gallon kettle. (Will allow you to do a full 90 minute boil without spilling over.) The cheapest the solution is a large tamale steamer. You can usually find them at any place that sells a decent amount of kitchen equipment for $30-40 for an eight gallon pot. That will serve your needs for a long time. They are very squat and should fit under your microwave and let you use more than one burner at a time.

 

If you plan on doing full boils (or all-grain) for 5 gallon batches you will need a pot that is at least 8 gallons. 10g is best for boil over reasons.

If you want to limit the size of your kettle and still do full boils your fix of ramping down the batch size works as well.

Also, I wouldn't worry about you not being able to lift a full pot of wort, because most likely all transfers will be done with siphons. At most you could have a full pot of water that you extract brew in, but even then you can fill the pot on the stove with another vessel. So maneuvering isn't the tough part. Storing the pot when not in use if you are in an apartment though....

 

My kettle is ~15" in diameter and my front and back burners are ~17" O/S to O/S. The kettle is also only 12" deep, so no interference with the overhead microwave. Check your dimensions, but if you decide say 3 gal batches are what you are interested in, that's a good size also as you can get by with smaller everything. If you can lift ~ 55#s even 5 gal batches are pretty easy without a ball-valve on your kettle.

 

Water weighs ~ 9#/gal, so....9x3=27+ kettle= conservatively 35#...on the way down anyway...you still have to get it up to the stove when you go all-grain : )

 

whirlpool plus siphon

or just siphon and let everything go into the fermentor

 

You don't HAVE to lift the entire kettle to go all grain if you set up your system so that you drain the mash tun right into the kettle on the stove.

I dumped the whole kettle through a strainer once, and I said f that. Siphoning is really not a problem unless you have a shit ton of whole hops loose in the kettle, but a ball valve would get fouled by that too and I sure wouldn't want to dump 5 gallons with a crap ton of hops into a strainer. Pellet hops pose no problem.

Siphoning (or pumping) the wort is what I (and I expect the majority) do.

 

For a 5 gal. batch (or less)...I won't even bother with siphoning or traditional whirlpooling...dump to fermenter through a strainer and get some oxygenation while you are at it.

 

"You don't HAVE to lift the entire kettle to go all grain if you set up your system so that you drain the mash tun right into the kettle on the stove."

True...but how would you do that with LESS hassle (in a kitchen)?

 

My mash tun sits on top of a 5 gallon bucket and runs off right into my boil kettle. So I have to stand on a step stool to sparge and stir, but it is way preferable to lifting 8 gallons of hot wort. Plus, I can put the fire to the wort I have run off so it doesn't take as long to come up to a boil.

 

Why do you have to lift hot wort? First wort shouldn't be boiling...Pick it up off the floor and move it to the stove. When it's done boiling...cool it and then lift/lower it to your fermenter...it will only be about 6 gallons then.
You must have an electric stove.

 

One US gallon weighs 8.34 lbs at pitching temp. Just saying.

 

From my Jethro Bodine fancy cyphering, for a 5 gal. batch that would be ~ 55#...not hernia material unless you need to file a disability claim : )

 

Not sure about you but my run off is about 165 degrees, it will scald you. That qualifies as hot to me.

Why lift it if you don't have to?

 

You have to...unless you want to build some kind of tower above your stove and mash on a chair. It's not like you are putting your hand in the 165* liquid...there is a kettle between you and it...you can use a pot holder, even though I've never seen the need to myself. I doubt most wort is over 140*F by the time you are done sparging anyway. Are you brewing 10 gal batches or mashing and boiling in different places? If so, then I can understand what you are saying.

 

http://www.rebelbrewer.com/shoppingcart/products/Economy-All-Grain-Mash-Kettle.html