Beer Forum

I recently purchased a 9 gallon kettle https://www.homebrewing.org/2-Weld-9-Gallon-Stainless-Steel-Brew-Pot-_p_1684.html and have used it twice now for boiling. I am brewing up 6 gallons of wort and only 5 gallons goes into the ferementer (using simple math, thats roughly 1 gallon left in the kettle). Is this about right? Optimally, I wish I could find a kettle with the valve a little lower so I can leave behind about 3/4 gallon giving me 5.25 gallons into the feremeter.

Thanks in advance for any input!

Hoont wrote:I recently purchased a 9 gallon kettle https://www.homebrewing.org/2-Weld-9-Gallon-Stainless-Steel-Brew-Pot-_p_1684.html and have used it twice now for boiling. I am brewing up 6 gallons of wort and only 5 gallons goes into the ferementer (using simple math, thats roughly 1 gallon left in the kettle). Is this about right? Optimally, I wish I could find a kettle with the valve a little lower so I can leave behind about 3/4 gallon giving me 5.25 gallons into the feremeter.

Thanks in advance for any input!

Easy, bump up your recipes from 6g to 6.25.

My output valve on my 15.5g kettle leaves 1.5g at the bottom. I used to just leave it, but now I just tilt the kettle to drain completely. If the batch is going in one of the conicals, I'll let it sit for a little while before pitching & dump the hop/break material first. If it's going to a bucket/carboy I use 2. 1 to let the material settle, rack off into a 2nd vessel & pitch there.

But seriously, bump your recipe up as high as you can go & still be able to control the boil over. There's nothing wrong with a 7.75g batch.

Good point oz.
Just bump up you recipe and make more wort.
Itll only be a couple bucks worth of grain. You could even further it by splitting your batches in 2. That way, you could try different yeasts and do side by side comparisons, furthering your knowledge and tastes in different yeasts and hkw the work out for you.
Cheers!

Could the op also use a dip tube bent up/down to the desired level?

I certainly can bump up the recipe to 6.25 though I'm still on the kitchen stove... it took 48 minutes to heat up the 6.87 gallons to boil last night. I just wanted to check to see if my kettle loss was reasonable... sounds like it is.

Yeah it's reasonable. I've got a MoreBeer 1550 and about a gallon is left behind so I brew 6.5 gallon batches. If I
m feeling ambitious I pour off the rest into some pitchers, let the trub settle, then can the wort that remains for future starters.

animaldoc wrote:Yeah it's reasonable. I've got a MoreBeer 1550 and about a gallon is left behind so I brew 6.5 gallon batches. If I
m feeling ambitious I pour off the rest into some pitchers, let the trub settle, then can the wort that remains for future starters.

Nice! Thats a good use of the excess wort. Thanks!

I have two different dip tubes that I screw onto the bulkhead fitting. The one in the middle picks up the wort very close to the wall of my converted keg. This one leaves about 3 quarts in the kettle. The one on the left draws the wort a little further away and below the first one. This one only leaves about a quart but tends to draw up some trub, especially when I do hoppy beers.



When I install one of these I stick the valve/bulkhead assembly in the hole but don't tighten down the nut. I then put on the dip tube fitting by rotating the ball valve around until the dip tube is on tight. Then I tighten down the nut once I get the dip tube in the right position. Before soldering the 90° angle fitting into place during initial fabrication, I dry fit the assembly to the keg so I could mark the correct positioning of the fitting so that the end of the tube will be touching the right place in the keg once the fitting is screwed on tight and the ball valve is in the correct position.

I minimize trub pickup by sticking a small stainless steel scrubbie on the end of the dip tube as I am installing it for a brew session. I always use at least some, if not all, whole hops in my brews so this helps with filtration.

Wayne