How Many Kettles Do You Need?

Well, you don't boil the mash. You only boil the wort.

Realistically, you need one 8-10 gallon pot to boil the wort. Then you need something to mash the grains in, many use a plastic cooler for this, but you can also use a pot with a false bottom and spigot. It helps to have a second large pot (or third if you're using a pot for your mash) to heat your sparge water...which is the water you add after draining your mash-tun (cooler or pot full of grain) to extract more of the sugars.

It sounds like you need to give this a read:

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/index.html

 

Many do a three vessel system, which is a hot liquor tank, mash tun, and boil kettle. The boil kettle as namesake would indicate is the only one that has to be a kettle. As for the hot liquor tank and mash tun, it's to personal preference if you want the ability to heat either the mash or the reserve hot liquor directly. You'll see heating directly referred to as simply a direct fire system. The trade off of direct fire is lesser insulation for the ability to heat of the fly.

 

I use 3, but you could probably get away with using 2 or even 1.

I use 2 3 gal pots to heat strike water and sparge water on my stove. I could do this in 1 pot, but it would take forever. I have another pot for boiling.

If you want to keep it all in 1 pot you could do BiAB

 

I have two 20 gallon kettles. One is my mash tun with false bottom and ball valve. The other starts the brew day as my HLT and then turns into my boil kettle after the sparge. For another $600 I could add another 20 gallon kettle and a floor burner, but it is not worth the investment IMO.

 

I use four, typically. One for mash liquor (6 gal), one for sparge liquor (5 gal) (typically I treat these two liquors differently and take care of this the night before), one for my mash tun (7 gal), and one for my brew kettle (15 gal). Three would suffice as I could easily use the same kettle for the mash and sparge, but I have both kettles as the 6 gallon was formerly used as a boil kettle (back in my less-than-full-wort-boil days).

 

I have one 15 gallon pot. I heat my mash water then mash in a cooler. During the mash I heat what could be considered sparge water, but I don't sparge, I just add that water to the cooler after ~60 mins then drain back into the now empty pot for the boil. By not sparging, I probably (definitely?) lose some efficiency, but not enough to make me go buy another 15 gallon pot.

 

Maybe I'm missing something, but I always only needed one kettle when I was brewing extract?

Now, with all grain, I could see the need for more, if you have direct fired single tier system, but even with my janky set up, I have one kettle, and two coolers. Heat up mash water, put in mash tun, add grain, mash it. Then heat up my sparge water, put it in my HLT cooler, and I've got an empty kettle to collect my runnings and start my boil.

 

I would have a hard time only using 1 kettle for all grain. you can't sparge into a boil kettle without another kettle right? Am I missing something?

 

Sure you can, if you have a mash/lauter tun that is not a kettle. And even if you're fly sparging, you can feed the sparge water from a hot liquor tank that's not a kettle.

 

thanks Vikeman, I was only thinking about it in terms of what I use. I use the low budget tools I can, but my strike water comes from my original kettle I used for extract brews (again keeping it cheap)

 

It depends what you are calling a kettle. I have one 25 Gallon SS kettle with a 1/2" ball valve and a thermometer in it.
I use it to bring my mash water up to temperature, then drain it into my mash tun which is a 10 gallon Igloo cooler. I have a 5 gallon Igloo cooler for my sparge water (which is a bit too small) that I fill with the water remaining in my kettle. when done mashing, I drain the wort into a bucket then pour it into my kettle to boil. I usually boiler 8 gallons of wort for a 6.5 gallon batch.

I put plastic valves in the coolers and made a false bottom and sparger out if 1/2" CPVC pipe. So I say I use one kettle, two coolers and a bucket.

 

I use 3. A 40 gallon for the mash water. A 20 gallon for the sparge and a 10 for cleaning water. After the 40 gallon is done its sparge duty, it later becomes the boil kettle. ( 20 gallon batch )

 

You only need one pot . . . sometimes you want more :

 

I use a single 50L Keggle with sight glass, thermometer and ball valve to brew using my BIAB system. Works great! I don't see the need to invest in other equipment (hot liquor tank or mash tun) as long as I'm doing 5 gallon batches.

 

I own 4 kettles - a 16qt graniteware I mostly used when brewing extract, a 30qt aluminum that came with my burner, a 33qt Graniteware and an ~ 20gallon one of mystery metal I got at a yard sale.
Typically I use the 30 qt to heat my strike water and then spare water, (I mash in a 48 QT converted cooler) and boil in the 33qt.

 

Three containers is about right. At least two need to be capable of heating/boiling water, but they don't all need to be the same size. Your mash/sparge water kettle can be 1/2 the size of the boil kettle, and a plastic cooler can serve as a mash tun.

But we are talking minimums, right? There are many standard recommendations that go above and beyond, to say nothing of potential scalability.

 

Once you go all grain. Three or four vessels.
What other people have said. Mash tun, boil kettle and hot liquor tank.
Four is nice cos then you get into the sophisti-ma-cated brews and do decoctions, etc.
Around these parts that breaks down to two rubbermaids, and two kettles.