I'm reading JOY OF HOMEBREWING & just watched BASIC BREWING (DVD).
What size and material brew pot would you recommend for a new home brewer?
I have a big Aluminum pot (Turkey fryer) that should work but I'm told that Stainless Steel or Enamel are the way to go.
What is a good pot to get that I will not likely outgrow quickly?
Thanks
Depends on the size of the batch. If you are starting at a 5 gallon batch then I'd start with a 8-10 gallon brewpot. I prefer stainless. I know of some really good brews that came from an aluminum turkey frypot so I guess I'd start with what you have. Just remember that everything that touches the beer after the boil should be sanitized.
Enjoy!
If your only doing extract brewing to start, even a 5 gallon pot is fine. When you finish up all you do is added the remaining needed water to the carboy to get it up to the 5 gallons. Turkey pot will work just fine for right now.
The problem with Aluminum, as I understand it, is because of the acidity of the wort you can leech aluminum out of the pot into the wort. Not a good thing if you're concerned about heavy metal poisioning. I don't know this as fact, just what I've read.
I started out with a large SS stock pot. It was only 4 gal but at the time I was only doing extract brews so I just did a 3 gal boil and added water to the carboy to bring it up to 5 gal in the primary. Later on when I started doing all grain my wife bought me a stainless steel turkey fryer (8.5 gal) so we, my brew buddy Bob and I, could do a full 5 gal boil. That lasted for about 6 months before we found a used 15 gal SS beer keg. We cut the top out of it and it makes a great brew kettle. We still use the 8.5 gal pot to heat mash and sparge water in. We are now doing 10 gal batches, we split the brews so 5 gal batches were just going too fast. Put out the word that you're looking for a large SS pot, that's how we got the keg. A friend of my son's had it in his garage and gave it to us, And my brother found a SS turkey fryer and the burner at a garage sale for $10. Scrap metal yards are another good place to look. A keg will run about $45 but they also get industrial size SS pots from time to time.
Good Brewing Griz
However, the pH of wort isn't low enpough for this to be an issue...
---------->Denny
-- Life begins at 60...1.060, that is.
...and here's a little something Larry Bristol wrote in another thread regarding the same issue:
"It's an old myth. At one time, there was a scare that aluminum in drinking water and from cooking vessels was linked to Alzheimer's Disease. There is little evidence of this in the real world. Here is a link to a FAQ from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences:
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