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Electric Element Opinions (yours)

Post #1 made 12 years ago
by AJ Lenkowski
New to forum. I live in New York. Brewed many extract batches, but want to do all grain. I would love to do 10 gallon finished batches, but ......can't really afford to rewire my house so I can plug in a 3500 or 4500W element. (Also, can't imagine moving 10 gallons of wort/beer, and cleaning large equipment w/o a large sink, and i wouldn't be able to take it to buddy's house to brew).
Long story short: I came across this:

http://www.milehidistilling.com/heater- ... 500w-115v/


Would this have enough power to get 6-7 gallons of wort boiling? In your opinion? (I'd stick to 5 gallon finished batches, use my glass carboys until I splurged for conical, and hope my beer is better than what it used to come out.)

Electricity is out of my league.

AJ
Last edited by AJ Lenkowski on 04 Oct 2013, 05:09, edited 1 time in total.

Post #2 made 12 years ago
by PistolPatch
Welcome to the forum AJ :peace:,

Electricity is out of my league too. Fermentors aren't though :).

You mentioned aspiring to a conical. My advice would be to un-aspire. Conicals are pretty crap in our world, for many reasons that you never hear of :roll:. I'm short on time atm but here are a few I know of...

1. The angle of most conicals is usually not steep enough. In other words, all that stuff you think you are going to get rid of you won't. You'll actually have to tap most conicals a lot to get the solids to actully get to the bottom.

2. Their footprint is ridiculous.

3. Trying to refrigerate them is totally impractical for home-brewers due to the above.

...

I have four plastic fermentors, one fermenting fridge and one dispensing fridge. I try not to have all four plastic fermentors going at once but sometimes I do get in that position. Four conicals would be an absolute nightmare.

In my fermentors, I actually no longer use a 'tap' - all transfers are 'closed' and done through the lid. It's a long story but the only thing I wanted to say here is refrigeration is a lot more important than a conical.

Don't let the blingers trick you AJ ;)

:)
PP
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Post #3 made 12 years ago
by thughes
Not going to do it unless you have an additional heat source. I installed a 1500 watt water heater element in a 7 gallon pot to make 3 gallon batches. While it would eventually bring 5 gallons to a decent "simmer" with the lid on over the course of almost 2 hours it would not develop a boil sufficient to make beer and the "boil" would stop as soon as the lid was removed (do NOT boil wort with a lid on the pot!). I ended up using this pot in conjunction with my stove top burner (which as a ceramic cooktop and incapable of boiling more than a couple of gallons of water by itself).

This handy-dandy spreadsheet gives you some numbers to work with but be advised that it errs on the very optimistic side.

See my contributions in this thread and keep in mind that the Cajun Injector rig is 1650 watts.

---Todd
Last edited by thughes on 13 Sep 2013, 00:45, edited 2 times in total.
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Post #4 made 12 years ago
by AJ Lenkowski
thughes, (can we just call you Fonzie?)
Thanks for the reply. I have read some of your previous posts, and it's nice that I can sort things (on paper - in my head) because you have taken the time to post (and spend money experimenting!).

So, perhaps 2 of those elements would get me to a boil? Or, it would seem I could get to mash temp with the element in the kettle, and place the kettle on an electric hot plate as a supplemental for a boil? Now my concern would be finding a hot plate that won't break under all that weight. (scorching on a hot plate is another concern - i have scorched liquid extracts on a stove - scorch marks line up with the circular stove element - but the beer turned out ok - tough to scrub clean, though)

I'm thinking I might have to just do it, cross fingers, and hope for the best. Guess I'll go look for large surface, sturdy hot plate this weekend.

AJ

Post #5 made 12 years ago
by thughes
Two elements would do it and there are those to do exactly that. The "gotcha" is that you need to use separate power outlets that are on different breakers/fuses in your panel because 2 1500watt elements will draw greater than 15 amps and trip the breaker if both are plugged into the same circuit.

If you want to go the hot plate route, this one likes like a decent unit for a cheap enough price to experiment with. Just remember, same thing goes for hotplate + element as for 2 elements: you need to make sure they are plugged into different circuits.

Out of curiosity, is there a reason why you want to supplement with a hotplate instead of simply using your stove?

Please let us know how things work out for you....


---Todd
Last edited by thughes on 14 Sep 2013, 01:57, edited 2 times in total.
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Post #6 made 12 years ago
by AJ Lenkowski
Thanks for the heads up about being on different breakers: I read that somewhere else and I'm planning for it.

As to why not using my stove: wife is not fond of hops smell permeating her kitchen. We also have a glass top stove, and to make sure I never have a boil-over on it is to not ever boil wort on it. With an in-kettle element and a hotplate (and extension cord), I can brew on my front porch, or my garage, or in my basement. Flexibility

Post #7 made 12 years ago
by thughes
I found divorce an easier route than listening to my ex-wife complain about the smell (among other things). :whistle:

Anyhoo.........glass cooktop isn't worth a turd for boiling large pots of liquid as you are probably aware (I wish I had known that when I purchased my new stove).

Only other advice is to spend some money and get heavy duty extension cords, the current drop across light gauge wire typically found in cheap cords will cost you heat in the pot. You will also want to keep those cords as short as possible. As an example, I could bring 5 gallons of water to a boil with my Cajun Injector if I plugged the short (3 feet) heavy-duty power cord directly into an outlet but if I used a 20 foot 14ga extension cord I could never get the same 5 gallons hotter than 190F. I strongly recommend 12ga extension cords.

You will also need a couple of these unless your outlets are already GFCI equipped. Electricity and beer is a dangerous combination, please be careful.

---Todd
Last edited by thughes on 14 Sep 2013, 02:34, edited 2 times in total.
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Post #8 made 12 years ago
by cmcquistion
I ended up building an all-electric, single-vesseal, BIAB system using two of the following 110V, 1650 Watt heating elements:

http://www.zorotools.com/g/00065662/k-G1741853/

They're only about $10 each.

As mentioned above, you'll need to plug each element into a different circuit in your house. Running both at full power is perfect for boiling wort in my 11 gallon kettle. I built a little PID controller to control the elements for mashing.

I got much of my inspiration from the howto in this thread:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f170/how-bu ... le-304914/
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