I started all-grain brewing about 15 years ago. Made the usual start with the stove top, eventually moving
to the garage, accumulating equipment and process along the way. I was making good beer with a manageable
process in five gallon batches.
Developing recipes based on style research, ingredients from the local
HBS, brewing on a three vessel gravity-enabled system: 8-gallon aluminum HLT perched on a propane burner on a
high stand with a spigot running out into the top of a ten gallon cylindrical cooler mash tun, and then running wort from the cooler into a stainless
kettle on a second propane burner on the floor.
Eventually
I wanted to increase my capacity to 10
gallons. So I upgraded to a larger kettle.
Turns out the mash tun was too small for the new larger kettle. So I upgraded
to a larger mash tun. Turns out the previously larger kettle was
now too small for the volume that the new mash tun could handle. So I
upgraded to an even larger kettle. Soon the effort involved to lug the
large and
heavy equipment up the basement stairs and through the kitchen into the
garage
became tiresome and cumbersome. And
getting two 5-gallon fermenters from the garage and into the house and
down the
basement stairs was also tiresome and cumbersome....and dangerous.
Soon
brewing became a chore.
More work than fun, certainly not relaxing. I brewed less and less. I
didn’t miss it enough to fight the equipment. Eventually I missed the beer, so I considered a new
approach. The first thought was to move
indoors, into the basement. No more
lugging equipment up and down stairs. Moving the propane burners into the house didn't seem smart (though I know people who have done that). I researched
natural gas burners since there
is natural gas service in the house, but the prospect of any type of
open flame
indoors just didn’t sit well.
The solution had to be electric. But I didn’t want an element inserted through the
side of a kettle. Didn’t want a heat
stick. And those PID controllers are not
cheap. I wanted a traditional kettle on
a burner. I began to explore induction. Josh Weikert has been extolling its virtues for years, and shared some advice in the early stages of my research. It seemed like a great solution.
The first step was the burner. Check out the burner.
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