Boil Faster and Hotter

[Wolfehaus]

I always wondered if I was loosing heat out the side of my burner and the side of my kettle. I found a solution, the “heat guide” from http://www.homebrewtools.com wraps around the outside of my kettle and effectively collects all the heat from my burner and guides it up around the outside of my kettle. I reach a boil in a third of the time I did before using the heat guide, this saves me tons of time, especially when I am making a 10-gallon batch. Also, since it vents the heat up the sides of the kettle, I get a rolling boil from the lowest possible setting on my propane burner. They are going for $65 right now, and I’m sure this thing has already saved me at least that much in propane, and hours in time.

[BDawg]

Welcome-

Honestly, I hesitated to approve this first-time post as it is cutting very close to simply being an (albeit on-topic) advertisement.
We do not hesitate to allow frequent users to post links to useful products, but first posts are considered suspect.
We would appreciate it if you provide your affiliation with the site, if any.

Beyond that, tell us more about yourself and what/how you brew-
Hope you will contribute more than just spam.

[mike____]

Am I the only one who completely ignored the "Boil" in the subject?

[Bugeater]

I cut the bottom out of a metal washtub and set that over my burner. Works just as good as yours and costs nowhere near $65.

Here it is in use last winter:

[Whitebeard_Brewer]

BOOG, what is all that white shit around you there on the ground???

[Wolfehaus]

Just found the thing online and ordered it, got it in the mail and put it together. I live in northern Colorado and some home brewing friends and I like to get out of the house a couple of times a year and brew on the Catche La Poudre river. It's really neat, we use the river water (unfiltered) and then brew on the bank. No power or anything. Then, the neatest part, I think, is that we place our kettles in the river to chill, and it actually gets to pitching temp quite fast. Anyways, more to the point, the canyon has lots of big wind gusts and it was prolonging the boil, so I went searching for a solution, an employee of High Hops brewery pointed me to the site, and I liked the product so much, I just had to share.

I like the idea of the inverted bucket though. Why buy it when u can make it. I also make wine from kits (for the wife) and wanted a whine whip for de-gassing. So two days ago I came up with the idea of drilling a few holes in one of those plastic rods for adjusting the blinds and then threaded grass trimmer line through the holes, used a soldering iron to melt down the ends, hooked it up to the electric drill and shazam, home made wine whip.

More about me, like I said, I live in Northern Colorado, I bartend at Old Chicago, I've been homebrewing since 2008, I've been all-grain since 2009, I'm on batch # 76, on draft: Peaches & Cream ale, Poudre Pale, a big hopbursted DIPA, Foolin' with the Farmers Daughter (farmhouse ale,) and a rum-barrel aged porter. In carboy/oak-barrel: Dry Hopped steam beer, Chucktoberfest (my first name is chuck,) Oak aged Flanders Red, Cucumber Kolsh, and Donkey Oaty an Oak aged Bourbon-barrel Oatmeal Stout (I'm a fan of Cervantes.)