Is this setup enough for all grain?

[Tritonal]

I'm looking at soon taking the plunge to an all grain brew in the future and wanted to know if my set up was up to snuff. I Brew on a glass stove top in a 5g stainless steal brewpot. I have a 10g water cooler set up as a mashtun.

Would my efficiency suffer to much due to the 5g pot? I can bring 3 gallons to a boil but it takes a long time to get there and my pot bounces around like crazy. We are hoping to upgrade to a gas stove sometime in the future but its all I have right now

 

[NTXBrauer]

This would work for you for smaller AG batches in the 2-2.5 gallon range. Your pot size is a major limiting factor, as well as only being able to use the stove top for your source of heat. Start with smaller batches, and keep an eye on CL for a deal on a larger kettle and propane cooker. Cheers!

 

[taoisilent]

I brew 3 gallon batches on my stove top. I have a 5 gallon kettle, that easily holds a 4-gallon pre-boil volume. I live in a tiny cabin in the woods, and don't much care wrestling with heavy 5-gallon batches. It's perfect for me because I can do it all in the kitchen.

With what you have now, brew small batches and brew often like I do

Later, when you can afford a 7 or 8 gallon pot, you can start brewing 5 gallon batches if you like

Edit: But if you do get a bigger pot, you'll have to get a propane burner, there's no way your glass stove will get 6+ gallons of wort to the boil, not without stress fractures

 

[Hamaki]

You might consider a heat stick or two to help your stove on bigger boils.

 

[Tritonal]

Not sure if this works or not but with the kits I have been doing that have extract and about 4lbs of grains I only boil 3 gallons and top off the fermenter to 5 gallons. Would that work here?

 

[Hamaki]

Topping off with pre-boiled & chilled water should work. Remember that hops utilization suffers a bit on partial boils. A way to help that is to boil the extract from your steeped or mashed grain with your routine hop additions and add the DME or LME at the end of the boil.

 

[Kampenken]

I recently went to AG and my setup is similar to yours, so in good company! My mash tun is a 28qt cooler, figured smaller batch sizes, smaller cooler (keep a thicker grain bed). Who knows. I too boil on an electric glass top (better not break!). I struggled the first time and split my wort into two pots, and I used DME about last 5-10 min to hit gravity. I believe my issue is my SS pot (5g) seems too thin and heat loss prevented a good boil on the glass top (used to work fine yrs ago on an electric coil- I took yrs off from brewing, but back now!). My gf's thick walled stock pot (4g) boils up just fine and my last batches, two, back to back, same day!, were 2 & 2.5g ending, with no DME, so AG. I split these into 4 1g and 1 .5g containers, to test different hop profiles on two different grain batch profiles. So I feel I get best of both worlds- lots of experimentation, AG, oh and will bottle 4.5g!! Yay!

Here's my concern as a new AG brewer. I built a braid in my rectangle tun, a loop- about 2.5' long, splits off a T in the tun. I use copper wire to hold the braid in shape to keep from riding the sides of the tun. Reading Palmer again, I'm thinking for efficiency in a rectangle tun to use a copper pipe setup with even spacing from walls and each pipe. Also, cooler I bought didn't have a spigot, I drilled one in but seems too high (1/2" off bottom). So along with rebuild I will put drain to come out bottom. So don't know your tun setup but read Palmer's informative lauter efficiency. I bet it will make a difference.

And, if going AG, go smaller batches. Besides tun changes, I may consider some smaller (3g) carboys.

Cheers!

 

[Qhrumphf]

I did partial boil all grain for a long time. You'll take an efficiency hit due to limited sparge volume, efficiency of isomerization will be lower and you'll need more hops, and you'll hit the same IBU wall you would with extract, but it's workable. I managed to maintain about 65-70% efficiency that way (and a little above that on session beers).

Then I started doing split boils. It's not an exact science, but split the full volume of wort between two kettles over two different burners, and divide the hops proportionately. I used a 5 gallon kettle and a 3 gallon kettle, and was able to do full boils that way.

My current set up utilizes one 10 gallon kettle, two 1500w heat sticks, and sporadically my stove to provide extra heat when needed. That's usually only when climbing up to boil to speed the timeframe, as once I reach boiling the two sticks alone are plenty and I don't need my stove at all. Most kitchen circuits are 120v 20a circuits, and as long as you have two circuits like that and GFCI protection (one stick per circuit), with nothing else running on them, you've got plenty of power to run two sticks the way I do.