Question regarding volume of boil kettle 10bbl

[jrking01]

I am looking to purchase a kettle for a 10 bbl setup on direct fire. Any thoughts on what the minimum volume of the kettle should be to avoid boil over?

The reason I as this question is the kettle I am getting ready to purchase is listed as a 10bbl boil kettle but is right at 351 gallons. This seems to be off by 50+ gallons to me. I have only worked on a 2bbl setup and was unsure but the volume still seems low.
I dont want to spend $6000. on a kettle that is listed as a 10bbl that will only crank out 8bbls.

Thanks for any replies.

[Bainbridge]

Any fabricator worth its salt will give you a 'Working Volume' and some kind of total volume. Our kettle has a working volume of 10bbl, and a total volume of 12.5 bbl (388 gallons). To me your kettle seems a little small.

Use something like Fermcap-S to break surface tension and reduce boilover risks and you can safely fit more in the kettle. We usually kettle up to about 11bbls and between boiloff, hot break trub loss, temperature shrinkage, yeast dumping, dryhop and transfer loss, etc we can pull about 9.25 bbls out of the brite at the end.

[jfulton]

Generally a kettle is designed to have about 50-100% head space, though with an internal calandra you can get away with less as it will help keep boil overs down. Your goal should be to have 10BBLs of finished beer; that will be impossible to do if your kettle is sized as you say it is. Count on at least 8-10% losses from knockout to filled bright, sometimes as much as 16% for really hoppy beers.

[Kev7555]

Russell..

Are you guys using fermcap and if so are you filtering? Having a few boil over issues of my own on our nano sized system.

-Kev

[Bainbridge]

Yep, Fermcap S from BSG. Not filtering but we fine. (My plate filter broke a sightglass and we're having a devil of a time finding a new one and new gaskets for it.) No head retention issues or anything to speak of. We add about 25ml or so (into 11bbls) right before the hot break, works fantastically. Still need to watch it just to be safe and we keep the hose ready just in case, but it's much more controlled.

[jrking01]

Bainbridge....
any chance you would share who the manufacture of your kettle is? I would be interested in looking at a kettle with a little more volume than the one I am currently looking at.
Thanks, Jim

[Bainbridge]

Metalcraft Fabrication in Portland, OR, did our brewhouse. It's similar to this one here. http://www.metalcraftfabrication.com...brewhouse.html Think that one's Burnside Brewing's. Ours is only 10bbl, we did a 20bbl combi HLT under the mash tun instead of separate like there, and we only needed a single deck. Works like a dream now, once we worked the inevitable kinks out. There's some photos of it up on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BainbridgeBrewing