Starter brew kettle/pot suggestions?

If you want to do full boil, you'll need larger than 6 gallon due to boil off/evaporation. I suggest 10 gallon at a minimum. I suggest looking online at amazon. I have a 10 gallon aluminum kettle that I scored for like $60 w/lid. I also have 15 gallon stainless kettles that cost $300. I still use the aluminum one just as much to be honest.

Take a look at this-
http://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Group-Quart-Aluminum-Stock/dp/B001PZ7K7A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355755815&sr=8-1&keywords=60 qt aluminum stock pot

A few cases at a time is 5 gallon batches. So you'll need a kettle that can accomodate. A kettle smaller than say 10 gallons is really going to limit you. You increase the risk of boil overs, etc. You'll end up spending more money in the long run if you start out with a small kettle. Consider a bigger kettle like the one above.

 

5 gallons is about 2+ cases.

I think you need to go ahead and spring for the bigger and better kettle now. The one from my turkey fryer (not used for turkey, btw) is 7.5 gallons and is good for most of my personal 5 gallon applications. A 5 gallon pot will wind up being too small very soon and you'll wish you went bigger. Going for the full ten gallons would be even better.

 

if you're only going to be boiling 2.5 gallons at a time you should be good with just a 5 gallon kettle. If you're going to be doing full 5 gallon batches then you're probably going to need a bigger kettle to help with boil overs. My advice would be to just get the larger kettle...this way if you want to do full boils any time in the future you won't have to go out and get another kettle.

 

Besides the boil over potential, you also have the volume lost to evaporation during the boil, the trub the you might want to leave in the kettle, and then the lost volume in the fermenter due to the yeast cake, hops, and trub. To have a final 5 gallon volume of beer to keg or bottle I usually shoot for about 5.5 gallons into the fermenter. Then to account for the losses in the kettle, my starting boil volume is about 7 gallons, so I would think the practical smallest kettle you would want is 8 gallons, and that is stil tight. Of course thre are ways around this with partial boils or smaller batches. My first batch was a partial boil in a 5 gaklon pot and I topped it up with water in the carboy. From there on out I have used a converted keg, which can do up to 10 gallon batches.

 

do yourself a favor and don't buy anything smaller than a 10 gallon.

 

Are you brewing on the stove or outside on a gas burner? Some indoor ranges will not boil 6.5 gallons of wort. I did partial boil extract batches for years with good results. I would boil 3 gallons of water first then dump into my fermentation bucket to cool while I brewed my partial wort.

 

I did extract kits out of a 3 gallon pot we already had for a while before moving to full kettle boils. For me, chilling that much boiling wort was as much an obstacle to be overcome as getting a large enough kettle.

 

I would get at least a 10 gallon kettle for full boils. For a full boil I usually start with 6.5-7 gallons of water to get down to 5 1/2. Most beers I'm adding 6-10 lbs of DME which will bring it up to about the 8 gallon line. The first few minutes of the boil I have to keep the heat low and have a spray bottle in hand to avoid a boilover. Remember to buy or make a wort chiller also if you plan on doing full boils.

 

Honestly, Ide go full blown 15 Gallon kettle with valve and thermometer. Get it out of the way haha I can almost guarantee she will get hooked.

But a more realiztic answer would be a six gallon kettle. I wished a had something a little bigger when I had nothing but a 5 gallon pot. Hope you get it figured out!

 

I used a cheap canning kettle that I already had for partial boils on the stove top when I started. I could start with 4 gallons in the kettle, just barely get that up to a boil, and would finish typically a little less than 3 gallons in the fermentor and top up with distilled water.

Since then, I upgraded to an outdoor burner and a 8 gallon pot for full boils. This worked okay for extract, but since switching to all-grain I lose a lot more volume to break material and barely eek out 5 gallons. I will probably eventually buy a 10-gallon boil kettle and re-purpose the 8 gallon kettle as the HLT for the HERMS systems I'm ultimately envisioning.

Which is to say, my bottom line advice is probably: start cheap and small (5-6g) if you're going to be doing extract brews on the stove top (and don't know for sure if she'll get hooked by the hobby or not). But beyond that, go for the 10gal.

 

I've got a 7 gallon that i use for full boils, and it's a tight squeeze until I hit my hot break. If I do alot of cone hop additions it also makes for a tight squeeze. Do yourself a favor and go with a 10 gallon.

 

There are some good restaurant supply websites that sell a 10 gallon aluminum stock pot for under $40. Google is a good thing!

 

so I am looking to get a nice quality brew pot. I've been looking at blichmann kettles but I don't know if I need to get the best of the best right off the bat. So I ask you BA home Brewers, what is a high quality kettle in the 100-200 dollar range?

 

http://www.morebeer.com/products/14-gallon-stainless-brew-kettle.html The 8gal version is great but all of us have or will need the extra space eventually.
This pot, if taken care of, will last and be able to grow with your hobby. If you never go beyond 12 gal batches (12 gal batches require extra attention, but very doable) this is the last pot you buy. Pumps and other accessories can be easily added and will evolve with your hobby. Just my $0.02.

 

I just started brewing and I went with an 8gallon tall boy dark star burner combo for $120 from northern brewer. Love it

 

I still brew in a 3 gallon pot on occasion and just do 5 gallon partial boil batches...still makes great beer without a full boil and can do it stove top without wasting more money and time on a burner and $10 of propane per batch. Most will poo poo this idea, but after brewing for 21 years and doing hundreds of partial boils, I've never had any problems from not doing a full boil.

I've had many friends and other beer geeks compare my brews that were same recipe but 1 brewed partial boil and one full boil, and they couldn't tell the difference.

 

I typically brew 5-5.5 gallon batches in this kettle and love it:

http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garde...llon-4-piece-Brew-Kettle/8229086/product.html

Their 16 gallon kettle is priced at $190 even.

 

I'm still a big fan of turkey fryers for making beer. There's plenty of heat, the pot is big enough, and they're cheep. The only thing I don't recommend about turkey fryers is frying turkeys in them.

Well, I lied. I also don't recommend making beer in a turkey fryer on the 3rd floor balcony of your apartment building when your brother's 9 kids have come over for the weekend.