The Build

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.