5 gallon batches in 15 gallon kettle?

[briandickens]

So my wife is willing to buy me a 60qt kettle for christmas (yay!). I only do 5 gallon batches right now. Is that kettle going to be too big for 5 gallon batches? Can a kettle be too big? I mean I imagine if I had a 100 gallon kettle then it would be too big to boil a 5 gallon batch, but 15 gallons should be okay. Right? I want to do 10 gallon batches eventually so I think the 15 gallon kettle will be good for the future. BN, will this be good for the present???

[SoCalBrewer]

It would be a good choice espically if you were going to do bigger batches in the future. I did 5 gallon batches in beer kegs before moving up.

[briandickens]

That's what I thought. I can't wait!!!

[Mylo]

So my wife is willing to buy me a 60qt kettle for christmas (yay!). I only do 5 gallon batches right now. Is that kettle going to be too big for 5 gallon batches? Can a kettle be too big?

Can you ever have too much money? Can you ever have too much pussy? Alright, how about too many exotic sportscars? Are you starting to see the pattern here, or do I have to spell it out?

Best plan is to play it down with the wife... "O.K.... I guess that will do... for now" That way in two years when you tell her that you want to buy a fiddy G, Jon Plise model from B3 - she won't be shocked.

I did one "pilot" 5 gallon batch in my converted keggle before I stepped it up to 10 gallons. It quickly becomes a lot of time for 5 gallons - especially when you start doing all grain.


Mylo

[yabodie]

Look at the cost differences between the various kettles. Once you plunk down the greenbacks for a 9 gallon, for 20 more you can get a 15 gallon and for another 20 you can get a 20 gallon one, etc.

So plan for the future and make a single investment, not many.

This is why I am planning my sculpture for 20 gallon batches, even though I brew in a converted keg...

[numsquat]

If your new pot is wider than the old one, I ran into three things going to a bigger pot:

1) Your evaporation rates are different, the wider the pot the more evaporation (same heat/time period). I have 9 gal & 20 gal pots and the first time I did a 5 gal batch in the 20 gal I had to add water at the end.

2) Being the 20 gal is wider than the 9 gal, cooling off takes longer with my immersion chiller. I'm looking to get a pump this winter and do Jamil's pump/whirlpool set up.

3) More wort is left in the kettle, so adjustments need to be made.

After having these issues, and not wanting to adjust recipes, I now use the 9 gal pot for 5 gal batches. I just had to adjust the recipes (once) for 10 gal batches.

[J.Brew]

I have a 60 quart Polar Ware brew kettle and I use it for both 5 and 10 gallon batches. I love it. Whats nice is I can use all the same variables such as boil off rat and wort left behind, in pro mash as they remain constant for my kettle.

[slanted & enchanted]

i brew with two other dudes, so when that happens we just max out the converted keg system we brew on. since the rig is in my garage, i brew a lot solo. i'll just do 6 gallon batches because, to tell you the truth, i brew WAAAY more than i can drink. anyways, the problems i have with the smaller batches is that my mash temps are more touchy because of that loss of thermal mass. 30 pounds of grain will hold a temperature steady forever. the smaller batches lose heat quicker. plus with so little water i sometime overshoot my dough-in. but i just throw in frozen water bottle "missles" that will drop the temp 3-4 degrees in no time. thats the good side of less volume.

also boil off is the same, which is easy to deal with if you don't overlook it. if you do forget, you end up with a lot less beer percentage-wise, obviously. the first time i did a 6 gallon batch i enced up with 4.5 in the fermenter and 4 in the keg and was a bit miffed.

other than that it works great. chilling is a dream with 6 vs 14. man, i can get it down to 45 in like 25 minutes. and it's good to have the flexibility if you want a big batch for a party or something.