Moving to 10 Gallon batches just wondering what size boil kettle I’ll need (ALL GRAIN) ?
The bigger the better. I thought my 16.25 would be plenty. Well, guess what has two thumbs and still has boil overs? This guy!! So, go big or go home. I would not attempt it with less than 15 gallon, and a good spray bottle.
I use a 20 gallon for my 10 gallon batches and occasionally pull off a 13.
I’m using a 15 gallon, and really wish I had something closer to 20. Go as big as you can reasonably afford.
I just bought a 20 gallon kettle. It’ll have its maiden voyage in a few days. I figured if I want to make 10 gallons, I’ll need to brew 12 to compensate for the sludge in the bottom of the kettle. If I want 12 gallons, I’ll have to sparge off close to 14 gallons. A 15 gallon kettle just won’t cut it. The 20 gallon kettle was only $30 more at NB. I figured it was a no-brainer.
So I was wondering something in the 25 gallon range wouldnt be overdoing it?
Nope, not at all.
Blichmann also recommends twice the capacity. With boiloff, your starting volume might be 12 gallons and 3 gallons is usually only 6 inches of headspace. Not much.
I use a 14 gallon kettle and it is pretty close to the top when I finish sparging/lautering. I recommend larger ifd you can, but the 14 gallon works, you just have to feather the flame. That said I always targeted 12 gallons so that I got 5 by the time I was kegging.
I’d go 20G. Wish I had one myself! 15G will result in boil-overs as I can fully attest to.
If you are careful you can bring the wort to a boil literally an inch from the surface and not have a boil over. You don’t have to have the flame turned up full blast all the way through the boil - a gentle boil is all you need.
I never thought it was that difficult to do 10 gal batches in a 15-gal kettle with 60-minute boils. Add some hops before the boil to avoid a boilover. That is a good tip from Greg Noonan’s Brewing Lager Beer. 15 gal might be small if you are doing 90-minute boils and you want to avoid topping up.
This is where I had my problems. 90 minute boils with BoPils malt where I needed a good rolling boil to get rid of the DMS. 60 minute pale ale/2 row boils are not a major problem, but you still have to be careful.
Dave
I use a 20 gallon kettle and what is nice is heating all my liquor at once. I heat the strike water to mash temp, drain off to my mash tun and leave the rest to heat to sparge temps and then drain to a 10 gallon cooler to keep it at sparge temps. Saves a little time heating all the liquor at once.
Has that worked for you? I’ve FWH dozens, maybe hundreds, of batches and I’ve never seen it prevent a boilover.
Are you saying it always boils over when you FWH? 
Guess it kinda sounded like that, huh? :) What I was trying to say is that it doesn’t seem to prevent boilovers any more than controlling the flame does. If I didn’t take other steps, I’d have boilovers, even with hops in 7 gal. of wort in a 15 gal. kettle.
I noticed that the wort is less prone to boil over when hops are added before the boil starts. It doesn’t prevent boil-overs, but it my experience it makes it easier to control them.
Kai
What he said
yep. I should read posts more carefully before I post.
Kai