The main piece of equipment I bought for this experiment was a 30 quart (7.5 gallon) electric fryer with heating element. I insulated the interior pot with Reflectix to improve the boil, which proved a bit difficult because it has a drain valve and snag-inducing screws on the inside. The motivation for this purchase was the desire to move back to full boils. Since I currently live in a third floor apartment with a wood-decked balcony, propane is not an option.

Electric Turkey Fryer

That was really only the first half of my experiment. The second half was trying brew-in-a-bag for the first time (BIAB details here). This essentially requires a large bag with a very fine mesh. The motivation here was to see if I could be lazier on brew day by using one main vessel and just to experiment with the new(er) technique.

The electric fryer has a handy basket to put on top of the element and to put the bag inside. I also used the basket later to put the wort chiller inside so it didn’t touch the heating element. This lent itself well to brewing in a bag–I was able to use the hook on the basket to lift the bag out and let it drip. Next time I try this, I’m rigging something up to make it so the basket can rest on top of the kettle rather than hanging above it.

Let’s walk through the fateful brew day that will probably entertain you, and possibly educate you on what not to do. The first tip: Don’t brew before you’re ready. I usually like to check the day before I brew for all required equipment and ingredients so I can hit my LHBS before I brew if necessary. I didn’t do this since I was rushed, and was missing some things I needed.

Let’s start with the water. I pulled a “smooth” move with my brewing salts. I rushed to get the salts put together and ended up adding the calcium carbonate to the brewing water before the mash, which resulted in undissolved chalk. Note to self, for the third time: Only add calcium carbonate during the mash so the acidity will allow it to dissolve.

As for the mash itself, I got terrible efficiency–my bag was inadequate, to say the least. It didn’t cover the entire kettle (which had a greater circumference than anticipated). I only mashed for 60 minutes because I started so late, and failed to get more Iodine prior to brew session to test for starch conversion. I also suspect that my mash pH was low because of the undissolved chalk, even though my pH strips (yep, economy strips, not the good ones) told me it was right around 5.2. That said, the fryer was nice for applying heat when it failed to hold mash temperature (since the grains were in a bag in the basket that was on top of the heating element, it was safe to use).

Even though I had already essentially failed at brewing the Belgian Pale I set out to brew, I went ahead with it for the sake of experimentation and the wonderful story that I get to tell you.

Moving on to the boil… The electric fryer did not produce a vigorous boil with 5+ gallons of wort. It reached 208-210 F. The wort was turning over inside, so it was truthfully probably enough, but I’ll still see if I can improve the insulation a bit. I put the lid on for a few minutes 3 or 4 times to get the boil going vigorously (first to help precipitate the hot break before adding hops). The significant surface area of the wort in the kettle lead to high evaporation rate–I needed about 7 gallons of distilled water for a 9.00lb (grist) batch @ 90 minutes.

After the boil time was complete, I used my fancy new efficient wort chiller. I put it in my wort like any other chiller, attached it to the sink, and turned it on at the end of the boil. It seemed to be going so I dove into a section of How to Brew for the umpteenth time. I checked the temperature after 5 minutes and it had dropped about 20 degrees, which seemed a bit slow for how cold my water is, but went back to reading. 10 minutes later, I checked again, and it had gone down about another 20. This seemed slow again, so I tilted my pot lid up and found something very distressing…

The chiller was spraying unfiltered, cold tap water into my wort and likely had been for quite some time. Needless to say, MoreBeer got an email from me and I’m planning on getting a replacement from them. If nothing else ruined the batch, this could well have done it.

But, hey, I learned some stuff.

In short, the electric fryer is a little questionable as a complete BIAB vessel. At 30 quarts (and with the need to put the grains in the basket), I suspect once I get over 12 pounds of grain or so, it will be too much to mash. The vigor of the boil was lower than I’d like, so I’m going to have to try to improve that somehow. Maybe I’ll surround the Reflectix with some aluminum tape to make it slightly better.

It was fun in retrospect, though quite stressful and frustrating at the time. But, again, it was a great experiment. Any thoughts for improving BIAB in an Electric Fryer are more than welcome. Or, if you have questions, I might be able to answer them.

Cheers!

If you don’t want to read through my entire process, here’s a quick summary, prefaced by a note: First off, this is experimentation. I’m trying to share the results of my experiments as I go through with them, which means not all of them will yield positive beer-worthy potential.

Dandelion roots fall into the “not gonna brew with it” category. In short, they simply don’t taste very good. The bittering quality is poor, the aroma is off-putting, and the taste can be described as kissing someone who just finished smoking an entire pack of cigarettes at very high concentrations or shoving a stale-but-dirty sock in your mouth at half that concentration. That said, here’s what I did:

The Control – Hop Tea

• Boiled 32 oz. water with 1/16 oz. (~0.06 oz.) of 5% Alpha East Kent Goldings for 15 mins.
• At the end of the rather vigorous boil, I ended up with 16 oz. of Hop Tea.

The Experiment – (Roasted) Dandelion (Root) Tea

• Boiled 32 oz. water with 12 g. (~0.42 oz) of Organic Roasted Dandelion Roots for 15 mins.
• At the end of the rather vigorous boil, I ended up with 16 oz. of Dandelion Tea.

The estimated IBU (using Tinseth) of the Hop Tea at the 16 oz. concentration was 30.9. As you might expect, this is bile-bitter when not balanced by any malt, but I sampled it anyway. It tasted like bile. The Dandelion Tea was not nearly so bitter, but it tasted rather terrible as well.

I proceeded to make the call to dilute both back up to 32 oz., which brought the estimated IBU of the Hop Tea to 16.1. This is still very bitter, but it’s tolerable and provides enough liquid to test various dilutions. The Dandelion Tea still tasted quite bad, but it wasn’t so much bitter-tasting as stale and dirty-tasting.

It was at this point that I decided the experiment was over. Roasted Dandelion Roots are not a viable option (in my home brewery) to replace hops as a bittering agent, and I wouldn’t them as an aromatic because I don’t want their flavor or aroma anywhere near my beer.

But, I forged on with one more dilution. I diluted both to 64 oz., which brought the estimated bitterness of the Hop Tea to a not-unpleasant 8.0 IBU and the estimated grossness of Dandelion Tea to “tolerable.” I downed a glass of each to punish myself and poured the rest out.

In hindsight, I should have expected the Roasted Dandelion Root to be incompatible with beer. Firstly, a large amount of Dandelion Root is supposed to be beneficial to the liver, which is quite the opposite of what large quantities of beer is supposed to do to your liver. Secondly, I made a traditional cup of Roasted Dandelion Root Tea prior to the experiment and found it rather unpleasant to begin with.

Oh, well… You win some, you lose some. At least I learned something. I might try the same experiment using Dandelion Leaves from the local health store, or I might wait until I can get fresh Dandelion Greens from the supermarket and run my next test then. If anyone else has experience using Dandelions (in any form) in beer, I’d be very interested to learn from you.

Ingredients
8 oz whole coffee beans
4 cups water (Brita-filtered in this case)

Process

• Coarsely crushed the coffee beans
• Put 4 cups of water in a large measuring cup
• Added the coarsely crushed coffee beans to the measuring cup in a muslin bag
• Put it in the refrigerator for 12 hours
• Pulled the bag out, let it drain for 15 minutes
• Steeped the bag again, then let it drain for 15 more minutes
• Split the solution in half (~16 oz in each measuring cup)
• Set Solution A aside
• Boiled Solution B in a pot for 10 minutes
• Rapidly cooled Solution B by immersing the pot in cold water in the sink
• Added Solution B back to its measuring cup, then diluted it back to 16 oz
• Put Solution A and Solution B in the refrigerator for 12 hours

Results

• After removing the two, I tasted them both.
• I first took a sip of water and sniffed my wrist to cleanse my palate.
• Then, I took a small sip of Solution A (the normal cold-brewed coffee)
• I then took another sip of water and sniffed my wrist to cleanse my palate.
• Then, I took a small sip of Solution B (the boiled cold-brewed coffee)

In short, they did not taste the same. Solution A tasted like I would expect cold-brewed coffee to taste. It was mild with very little bitterness whatsoever, and was quite pleasant. The real surprise was Solution B. It was stronger and fuller, but still had very little bitterness or astringency. It had a slightly-caramelized and roasted taste to it. My wife described it as such: “It tastes like coffee smells.” – Mrs. Hop.

Boiling cold-brewed coffee produces a solution that tastes unlike both cold-brewed coffee and normal hot-brewed coffee. It was quite delicious indeed, being both bolder than cold-brewed coffee and less bitter than hot-brewed coffee. I will certainly be introducing boiled cold-brewed coffee to my next batch of porter or stout.