First brew in an Electric Turkey Fryer
 

I have been brewing 5gal crystal + DME batches for several years on my
wife's electric kitchen range and it needs to be replaced , mostly due
to my 7 gal brewpot. I also wanted to be able to boil in my basement
so that I didn't have to carry the brewpot down the stairs to cool.
Also I wanted to continue to use electric heat.

About a month ago I read a couple of threads in this newsgroup on
Electric Turkey Fryers and decided to follow up. It seemed like a good
way for me to go so I bought one . The volume is nominally 28 quarts
and the heating element is immersion and 1650 watts. It has a
relatively coarse temperature control which is of limited use and has
a double wall consruction which keeps the outside cool.

In using it I first attached it to a Brewers Edge Controller 2 and
this worked well to hold 154-158F so that I could introduce and sparge
the crystal. However, on going up to boiling it shut off at 212F and
I could not get a good rolling boil. I therfore removed it and
controlled the boiling by adjusting how much I opened the lid.

DME and hops were added as I would with the stove top pot and at the
end of the boil I removed the heating element and put in the copper
chilling coil. Cooling was a little slower due to the double wall
construction but I dont think that this is a problem.

Clean up was easier than with the stove top as there was no carmelized
material sticking to the base. My impression is that the wort is
cleaner and lighter than I used to produce. This brew had 8lbs DME and
I plan to use higher and lower levels in the near future.

I hope that this info helps some of the people who got my attention to
turkey fryers about a month ago in this newsgroup.

Cheers BoB Grierson