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Aluminum Brew Pot?
before I used my converted keg I made all my full boil brews in a 10.5 gallon food service aluminum pot that I got used from a flea market. The damn thing took a lot of cleaning to get the smell of onions out of it... but even with all that I have never had any off flavors, odors, or colors by doing countless batches in it. I still use it now to heat my strike water.
I've seen some turkey fryer kits that have kettles that have a drain faucet built in at the bottom to easily get rid of the oil... If I could get a hold of one of those with out the burner I'd be awesome.. that's a really nice feature that I previously haven't seen.
But a drain at the base of the kettle would pull all your break and hop material into the fermentor, or worse, clog the valve.
Maybe if you could somehow build a small snorkle tha sat an couple inches above the trub "cake", you could get away with this. I thought about the same thing as potentially a poor mans "conical".
Advice from the morebeer.com brewers:
" Q: Can I use a aluminum pot to boil my wort?
A: Conventional wisdom says no. Alluminum is disolved in an acidic envrionment and will enter the wort. Most metals are scrubded out by the yeast and I would expect alluminum would end up in the yeast and not the beer but, I know of no studies showing this to be true.
To be safe, I would not use alluminum any place where it can contact wort or beer. "
http://morebeer.com/themes/morewinepro/ … at_id=1061
I researched this myself, as I got in a tight and had to use my turkey fryer... I don't think they'll be much of a problem, reading some of the other posts here, but I'll give you an update, as I'll be kegging it in a couple weeks. This morebeer post scared me at first, but I think the beer will be O.K. I did notice when I was washing my new aluminum pot that the water turned metalic, but I was probably scrubbing it too hard.
yeah, you shouldn't use anything abrasive when washing out an aluminum kettle. You want to keep that oxidized surface on the kettle that forms when you boil your first couple of batches of beer. This surface will prevent more aluminum from dissolving into the wort. Just make sure to get all the chunks off after the boil and you'll be fine. I've used an aluminum kettle for a number of batches without any adverse flavor.
Agreed. Been using aluminum for a long time now with no ill effects. It's a good idea to boil up some water in the pot first and throw that water away, as that will get your protective coating going and clean any loose metal shavings or paper scraps that might be in the pot from packaging materials.
But in all my time using an aluminum pot, nobody has ever said "your beer has a metallic taste to it", so I gotta figure it's doing just fine.
DT
i just broke down and bought one.. couldnt pony up the cash for a stainless
Now that have a friend to brew with, I may be able to get a SS pot sooner than later. We're going to go halfsies on a 60Qt SS at about $125 shiiping included.....we usually brew at his place anyway, so we'll leave it there and have one available to make bigger batches.....
I know a few larger scale microbrewers and the only reason they don't use aluminum is because the use caustic soda to clean their vessels between batches. That's it.
A cheaper way to go may be the Ceramic coated steel pot.
I also have an aluminum turkey fryer, new in the box. From reading the posts on this thread, don't use anything rough to clean the pot. What about before using it the first time? Boil several patches of water? Anything special? Thanks.