Will an induction cooktop/hotplate work with a stainless steel kettle? I’m looking at one so I can do my boils outside and silence the griping about how stinky are the hops I’m boiling. Looks like 1800 watts is as big as they go…
What about one using cast iron burners that get hot but don’t show the heat, or one using the old “orange glow” heating elements? I have an aluminum, eleven-inch flame tamer (about 3 millimeters thick) to spread the heat and hopefully to prevent scorching of the wort during that hour-long boil.
Did a little research and found that my kettle is not magnetic, meaning it cannot be used with an induction hot plate. 18-8 stainless is not magnetic. 18-10 is magnetic and will work.
A lot of pots have a double wall bottom. Inside this double wall is magnetic material. Mine is like that. The pot itself isn’t magnetic but the bottom is.
FYI, I have an Avantco IC3500(Watt). They are awesome. Whenever I set up my basement brewery, I specifically bought a kettle that was listed as induction capable. I went with Spike. I have a 10 and a 15gal. If a magnet will stick to the bottom, it will work.
My kettle doesn’t have the tri-ply bottom. It’s just your common-variety, non-magnetic stainless. I didn’t think about how I was going to heat the wort. I figgered on my gas stove would be good enough. Then it came out that gas stoves are going to kill us all within the next fifteen minutes. It’s so windy and so dusty where I live that I fear an open-top boil outside will end with dust and dry leaves in my wort, so a propane burner is out. I guess I can use my stove. I’m thinking I’ll boil two-thirds of my fermentable volume (4.67 gallons in the kettle for a total of seven gallons to ferment); that should be watery enough to prevent scorching during the sixty-minute boil. 7000 BTU ought to do that, don’cha think?
Will still keep looking for a hot plate having a single cast-iron burner in the 1800-watt category.
Have you considered a diffuser? It’s a magnetic plate used between the induction burner and a non magnetic pot to enable use of induction. It heats the pot by convection. Not ideal but it gets you out of the kitchen.
Thank you for the heads-up on this item. Never knew such a thing existed. It’s a little smaller in diameter than is my kettle at eleven inches, but probably large enough to still be used. Inexpensive, too. Now I’m wondering if one can be found big enough to cover the entire bottom of my kettle.
Yes! Found one in just a few minutes. $31 plus shipping. Site has been bookmarked for an easy return and ordering. Now I need to find an 1800-watt hotplate that uses household electricity…
Yes, the magnet test is a poor proxy for whether a material responds to induction heating. Any metal will support a current from a high-frequency magnetic induction coil, but only some will have enough resistance to generate sufficient heat to be useful for cooking. Ironically, low-quality stainless is more likely to do this than higher grades. I expect that in the next few years almost all good cookware will become induction compatible. Even aluminum or high-quality stainless pots will have sandwich construction with an induction-heated layer in the middle.
