|
 The short story about brew kettles is that if you are going to be brewing a lot of beer, then you want to buy a stainless steel kettle. Stainless steel will cost more than aluminum, but it is by far the preferred material used by brewers of all levels. If you are a beginner, then you are highly unlikely to go out and purchase a dedicated PolarWare® brewkettle, you'll need to use common sense and take a few issues into account:
Issue #1: Use a New Kettle
You should not use the one you use twice a year to boil lobster either! Nobody wants fishy beer. The kettle you use to brew beer is for beer only. Keep the crawfish boil out. Don't use your brew kettle for other foods. If you do, then your beer will take on the flavor of the food you cook in the kettle. Fish will make your brew taste fishy, spices will impart spice flavors, and tomato sauce will make your beer taste like little Italy. In other words, keep the brew kettle pure.
Issue #2: Size Matters
If you are a beginner or intermediate brewer, then your brew kettle needs are relatively simple to fulfill. Any simple stainless steel kettle that is at least 16 quarts (and preferably more than 20 quarts) will do just fine since you will never be boiling more than 3 gallons of wort at a time.
Issue #3: Aluminum Turkey Fryers vs Stainless Steel
These are relatively inexpensive to buy and usually come with a big 180,000 BTU propane powered burner. If you are going to be brewing outside, then using the aluminum kettle that came with the burner is probably not a bad idea. Some people say they taste a metallic taste in beer made in aluminum. Personally, I've always brewed in stainless steel, so I don't know if aluminum really causes problems.
That said, you can pick up a relatively inexpensive stainless steel 20 quart (5 gallon) kettle that will always have a purpose in your homebrewing hobby, even after you've graduated to all-grain brewing.
 A Mashing Tun is a vessel that allows a brewer to extract carbohydrates from the barley and convert it to simple sugars. Beginners and Intermediate Brewers who are using malt extracts and partial mashes do not need to worry about this process, but all-grain brewers give it much attention. Many homebrewers will use the same kettle for mashing and for boiling. Others will use specially converted Igloo coolers to mash their product. More complex systems will use a separate stainless steel mashing tun and boil kettle, giving the homebrewer precise control over the temperature and transfer of the brew from one process to another.
Regardless of how the mash is achieved, the goal is the same. You want to create an environment whereby you have a very precise control over the temperature of your product. Igloo coolers are excellent at maintaining temperatures at a constant rate, however this method is basically a slow steep with no temperature control (so no multiple step mashes) since you obviously cannot put an Igloo cooler on your stovetop to add heat. It is also virtually impossible to cool the mash in an Igloo cooler since it is so well insulated. Once you've started the process, you are pretty much committed. Since many mashing schedules require varying the temperature to promote certain enzymatic activity, the advanced homebrewer will generally invest in a brew kettle capable of controlling precise temperatures and filtering the product through a false bottom. A mashing tun with a thermometer and false bottom are used quite often for these reasons.
The false bottom allows the sweet wort to filter out of the grains and into the boiling kettle. The thermometer allows the brewer to know the exact temperature of the wort. By simply turning off the heat, the internal temperature will fall by about one degree every two to four minutes. By turning on the heat, you can raise the temperature by about one degree every minute or two (depending on the BTU output of your burner) assuming you are dealing with a 5 gallon mash.
|
