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I am a kitchen-brewer doing 5 gls all-grain batches and am frustrated because the kitchen stove is lacking the last bit of power to yield a nice rolling boil. Are there any indoor-alternatives to the stove?

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You should find a handful of good answers here: homebrew.stackexchange.com/questions/2677/…. Voting to close as duplicate. – Brandon Apr 18 '11 at 0:56
Seconding the dupe. – Hopwise Apr 18 '11 at 2:51

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I've had the same problem on our small apartment stove, and the best trick I could come up wih was to preheat water in a separate kettle while I'm doing other prep work so I can have hot water on hand rather than try to bring 3 gallons to a boil all at once.

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Electric brewing with heat sticks. Or you can supplement your stove top with a little extra heating capacity using a heat stick.

Start here with this heat stick page
Listen to the April 29th 2010 Electric Brewing episode at Basic Brewing Radio.

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I've been using heatsticks for brew-in-a-bag AG for about 6 months now. I built two 1500W sticks (one with a right angle). I have to use two separate circuits, but I love the system. One mod I want to make to mine is adding a potentiometer to have a variable heat level. 2 sticks boils a bit violently with full volume - I'd love to have about 1.25-1.5x when I get up to boil. As a side note, I doubt I'll ever go to gas even when I have access to the great outdoors for brewing or move up to a larger batch size; electricity is too convenient! – sarumont Apr 25 '11 at 17:11
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One thing I did in my apartment was to get a griddle that would cover 2 burners. Put both burners on high, with the griddle on top. Put the brew kettle on the middle of the griddle. You get somewhere around 1.5 the BTUs of 1 burner (some is lost to waste heat, unless you rig up a proper way to hold that heat in, which I never really investigated).

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