sorry it took me so long to respond, beersmith is blocked on my computer at work and I haven't had much free time lately. so to answer your question, I have changed my mind on how I will brew big beers on this system. I have decided that ultra long boils are out, for several reasons. First, you don't get that much thinner of a mash. My boil off is about 1/2 a gallon an hour, so even a 3 hour boil would not raise the water level above the grain bed by much. And, in a recent episode of the jamil show he talks about how ultra long boils have an impact on flavor. So that's out. One way you could get around this would be to use a blichmann boil coil and get a custom made grain basket that would fit inside the boil coil, resting flat against the bottom of your pot. This would be more expense, and although blichmann makes a quality product, I wonder what would happen if your heating element fries 7 years down the road - would you even be able to replace it? My latest thought came from the same podcast episode of the jamil show on the brewing network I just mentioned. It is the recent brewing big beers episode. Jamil talks about a new experiment he has been trialing, he's calling it "multigyle" or some such thing. The idea is when you have a big beer to brew, split the grain bill in half. Mash as you normally would (brew in a bag style for the brew boss) using only half the amount of grain. Pull the grain and dump it, then put in the other half of grain using the wort you just made instead of water. Mash as normal again. You will wind up with the same gravity as you would have if you had brewed as normal. Jamil says you can repeat this process again and again, adding in more and more grain until you get to whatever gravity you want. He says the efficiency loss is almost ZERO which sounds like magic, but he says he is working with Palmer and I believe white labs and they are finding the same thing. Of course you could also just add a butt load of DME and call it a day. I have also found that no matter how thick and dry my grains are I always now stir them for a full 5 minutes before mashing. Hope this helps.