Say hello to my gigantic friend.

I came home from work today expecting to find a cardboard box about as wide and half as tall as me. What greeted me in the stairwell was decidedly squatter than I had anticipated. A corrugated cube, of sorts. Assembly required? <shake> Uh… no. Some… one else’s shipment? Uh oh. I tentatively jabbed my car keys into the packing-taped seam and pealed open the box to reveal my brand new 35-quart stainless steel brewpot (hell yes)!

My ambivalence soon gave way to opportunistic excitement as I hefted the monstrosity onto the stovetop and its girth covered, yes, not one, but two burners! Yeah, she’s a little shorter, a little fatter than she looked on the internet. But who isn’t? This can only be good.

Like any cook, I’m worried about getting a good boil on six gallons of water. I’ve only made one homebrew thus far - a summer ale with a manageable three gallon boil. But for my next brew, I want to try the 60-Minute IPA clone, straight out of Dogfish founder Sam Calagione’s book, Extreme Brewing. It requires a full boil of all six gallons, and an ebullient one at that.

I was all ready to set up a propane burner in the back yard, but now it appears as though I can turn out a perfectly good wort in the comfort of my own kitchen. I can blast that sucker with two gas burners, plus - the extra surface area provided by the pot’s ample diameter can only work out in my favor, bubblewise. I suppose I should do a trial boil with my stop-watch and six gallons of plain ol’ water, but I’m prepared to say this is excellent news. Today is the first day of fall in New England, and from here things only get… colder.