Replacing the 10 psi regulator with a 30 psi regulator for Banjo Burner

I have what appears to be a standard, square banjo burner with the 10 psi regulator (an SQ 14). And I also have seen that many people are very satisfied with the boil they get with the 30 psi regulator and burner.

Can I just purchase the 30 psi regulator and swap out my old regulator? Do I need to actually change the burner (which seems to be in pretty good shape)? I just don't want to create an unwarranted hazard.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thank you.

My brother has a small round banjo burner where the regulator went bad. He swapped it out with I think it was a 30 lb regulator. He loves it. He can push a lot of gas through with a nice clean flame, but still have plenty of fine tune control.

I used to use that burner and I have a gas manifold with a 30psi adjustable regulator. You can get more out of it with the higher PSI but only to a point, at some point the gas is coming out so hard the flames rise up from the burner so they are no longer touching and if you keep going you can blow it out. I had that and the other burner, the kind on the SP10 and you can push that burner much, much harder. I now only use those.

But long story short, yes you can get more out of it.

Thanks for responses. I am really looking for the more efficiency, rather than more btu's. It just seems like I go through an awful lot of lp gas during a 90 minute boil. I only get about 2 1/2 batches out of a full tank.

Icemaker said:

Thanks for responses. I am really looking for the more efficiency, rather than more btu's. It just seems like I go through an awful lot of lp gas during a 90 minute boil. I only get about 2 1/2 batches out of a full tank.

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What size batches, 10 gallon? You should get 4–6 batches from a tank for 5 gallons on that burner. A bigger psi regulator will only burn more propane. Do you have the flame dialed in with little or no yellow?

I am boiling about 10.5 gallons for 90 minutes in a 15 gallon kettle. I think I have been doing a couple of things wrong: 1) too high of a flame; 2) a 60 minute boil would probably do me just as well (and reduce my volume -- I tend to want about 6 gallons of bottled beer at the end of the process); 3) too rich of a mixture between fuel and air.

An individual replied to me directly and has me almost convinced to use natural gas instead of propane. He also gave me a couple of hints on improving the efficiency of the SQ14 burner. I will play around with it before I convert to natural gas. But when I am spending close to $10 on propane for every brew, that becomes a not-inconsiderable expense. And if I can use natural gas, everyone tells me that this will be a heck of alot cheaper.

Thanks for all of you help to a relatively inexperienced home brewer.

Glad you got the help you need. Not sure why the other person felt the need to keep their response private when good knowledge can help everyone.

I don't know where the best flame/heat setting is, but the point of no return just burns extra gas without boiling the water faster. When I used my fryer setup for the first time, I didn't crank up the heat, it was a little above minimum, and I can say w/o question even on a low setting I brought 8 gallons of wort to a boil in what seemed like ten minutes. My old burner would take longer than that to heat up 5 gallons. I will say when I boiled my first batch, the flame was uneven, and one side was sooty and high. I pulled out the connector bolt, and moved the burner head around until the flame was almost dead even, and when I cranked the heat up, the fire was strong and almost perfect blue. I am willing to bet my next batch will use less propane. So, I went from being angry and frustrated, to happy and calm. For $20.00, the whole turkey setup I bought is now a clean burning, heat making machine.