heat sticks

[TappedOut]

Without any other losses, 1kW will raise 1 gallon of water 1 degree F in 8.8 seconds. So for a 5 gallon batch, to raise 100 deg F will take ~ 1hr 15 min minimum. OK for overnight or overwork, but not so great if you're in a hurry, or even heating sparge water. Also 1kW is not enough for a decent boil.

I've seen on the net people using heat sticks to supplement their stove to do full wort boils, but the beer making has been banished from my kitchen. (er - uh, her kitchen).

The most important issue when using electricity, as far as I'm concerned, is to ensure everything is properly grounded, and use GFCI. Just like if I were using gas indoors, I'd make sure I had a CO monitor nearby.

[BrewHound]

Yes, the January meeting is going to be, "The Electric Brewery", Not sure what way we are going to go with this. Lee Is going to head this one up as he is already an all electric brewer.

I have decided that I am going to go this route too, as I am far to big a sissy to brew outside when it is cold or when it is hot for that matter. I have decided to go all electric myself and started putting my plans together.

The system I am going to build is a combination of the electric brewery and the Brutus 10. The stand setup is going to be similar to that of the Brutus 10. I like the way it is all mounted to the stand so it is very portable. can be found at

http://www.alenuts.com/Alenuts/brutus.html

the controls and elements are going to be from the electric brewery.

http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/

The only difference I am going to make is I don't like the way you have to switch from either boil kettle or hot liqour tank on the electric brewery system, so I am going to run it with 2 240v power supplies and then wire up a boil on/off and hlt on/off instead of the way they have it rigged with a boil on/off/hlt on 3-way switch. This way I can run it when 2 power supplies available so that once in the boil kettle another mash can be started. or you can run it with just a single power supply by switching the cords around.

[DrPaulsen]

the controls and elements are going to be from the electric brewery.

http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/

Whoa -- I'm glad I didn't read that site before getting started with electric brewing. That is by far the most complicated electric brewery I've ever seen. They've put so much money & work into it that I would never have started if I used that as my goal. It's very pretty, but much of it seems like overkill to me. For example, why do you need an indicator light to show that a pump is running? You can pretty easily hear the pump when it's on....

I'm a little surprised they went with a PID to control the boil -- that will result in a high boil-off rate as the heating element is always running at full power (much like always having the burner turned to max). They should have saved themselves the trouble and just used a light switch.

Anyway, I don't mean to criticize their work -- it's a very nice brewery and it looks like they made very thoughtful, conscious decisions each step of the way.

During January's meeting, I intend to cover the basics of brewing with electricity, not all the eye-crossing details given by that site. I hope to also show that you do not need to spend the time & money that those guys did to use electricity for brewing. Even though you don't often see evidence of it in brewing forums, there is a wide spectrum of ways to tailor electric brewing techniques to your needs. It can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. For example, anyone using an electric stove to brew technically has an electric brewery. Using water heater elements and electronic controllers requires a little more thought than turning on the stove, but certainly not as much as those guys put into it. Electric brewing certainly does not make sense for everyone, but hopefully those of you interested in it will find the topic a little less intimidating after the meeting.

[TappedOut]

I thought the whole point of going electric is to have lots of blinky lights.

[BrewHound]

Yep that was one of my other thoughts was a way to control the power output to the boil kettle, I actually like the PID on the boil kettle, you can st it to get you close and walk away having the system notify you when it hits that temp, the other thing I like about the PID is it gives you temp reading for the boil kettle. That is another modification I plan to make is inline after the PID before the element is to put a power regulator on the system so that I can control the boil.

I think the idea of the indicators is it is dangrous to run many of those things dry this is more of a notification or reminder that you need to check to make sure something is submerged or your valve is open. The indicators were probably more for the elements and they added them for the pumps to be well rounded and yes add sparkle to the system. the indecator lights are very cheap $2.50 on ebay so that is probably part of it. All the indicators on there cost probably about $16.

I do agree that it can cost much less. I already have a functioning brewery and this is more of a project to do during the winter months when it is cold outside and gives me something to work on. I also plan on making over a long time span, it will probably take me between a year and two to finish this setup and get everything done.

I do like the fact that they have a lot of control over their system, which requires some of this stuff in some form or fashion. like the way they have the HERMS set up. I think this mechinism provides a very good medium to gain presise control of mash temps and allows for a very easy medium to do step mashing if into that type of thing.

The other reason for this is. My dream job is to one day own a brewery. So a nice system for pilot development is essential. It may be a dream, but this is one step that I can take in that direction and feel I am making forward movement towards that dream.

[Matt F]

High Gravity in Tulsa sells a controller that lets you turn a dial to control the amount of power from the element. Just like turning the gas up and down. I imagine our local experts could recreate this for less. They also sell low density stainless steel elements I am sure you could source for less somewhere else.

http://www.highgravitybrew.com/productc ... 9p3073.htm

Remember it is a good idea to still vent your moisture if you brew inside. I have an old standard stove vent hood someone can have if they want. It was from Larry and I didn't need it since it wasn't powerful enough for my gas fired brewery. The old furnance fan works like a charm though.

[TappedOut]

Do you really need that fine of control over the element in the BK? My thought is to have two elements, carefully aligned so as not to cross the streams. When bringing up to temp, have both on. During the boil, only use one. According to my calculations, you need ~2.5kW to boil off ~1gal/hour (ignoring other heat losses). I'm not sure exactly what is the best size, but I'm thinking having a 2.5kW and a 3.5kW element. No need for PIDs or relays, just a couple of switches.

[BrewHound]

Do you really need that fine of control over the element in the BK? My thought is to have two elements, carefully aligned so as not to cross the streams. When bringing up to temp, have both on. During the boil, only use one. According to my calculations, you need ~2.5kW to boil off ~1gal/hour (ignoring other heat losses). I'm not sure exactly what is the best size, but I'm thinking having a 2.5kW and a 3.5kW element. No need for PIDs or relays, just a couple of switches.

No you don't, as I said I like the idea of the PID for the purpose of set it forget it type thing. As I don't like to sit in the brewery while I am waiting for boil to get up to temp which can take a while. As for the power control thing, I think you are better to have some control versus full up on or off. There would be quite a bit that goes into how much power is required such as

size of boil, (5, 10, 15 gal?)
Shape of boil kettle
Thermal mass of kettle
temperature of brewing enviroment (basement or outside)

For the little cost of a light dimmer switch it does not make good sense not to filter the power through one to add the control. As for the PID they cost about $30, again for the convience of not having to sit in the brewery waiting for the boil, seems well worth it to me.

[DrPaulsen]

No you don't, as I said I like the idea of the PID for the purpose of set it forget it type thing. As I don't like to sit in the brewery while I am waiting for boil to get up to temp which can take a while. As for the power control thing, I think you are better to have some control versus full up on or off. There would be quite a bit that goes into how much power is required such as

size of boil, (5, 10, 15 gal?)
Shape of boil kettle
Thermal mass of kettle
temperature of brewing enviroment (basement or outside)

For the little cost of a light dimmer switch it does not make good sense not to filter the power through one to add the control. As for the PID they cost about $30, again for the convience of not having to sit in the brewery waiting for the boil, seems well worth it to me.

For my first system, I built a phase-controlled "dimmer" switch (note that the kind you can find at Menards are not rated for the power levels you'll be asking them to control and I have no idea where you can find one rated for brewing duty). I've since moved on to an analog PWM controller driving an SSR, which costs a bit more (b/c you need to buy an SSR), but gives linear power control, whereas the dimmer switch approach was highly non-linear (e.g. 80% of the power was controlled within about 20% of the dial). That being said, I bet something like using 2 elements and just turning one of them off once you hit boil would work pretty well. It certainly seems like a good starting point. What's the worst that could happen? You could always wire the two in parallel and have them driven by a common control element later on, if it didn't work. I find that building and experimenting with the equipment is over half the fun of homebrewing.

CJ, you make a good point about the PID keeping you from needing to watch the BK too closely. It typically takes me 15-20 minutes from the end of the sparge until I can get a good boil going (longer in winter). Being able to set it and forget it would be pretty nice. I typically use that time to shovel out the mash tun and start working through my cleanup steps.

[tompb]

I can't wait for this meeting. I have been thinking about an electric brewery for a while.

I find that building and experimenting with the equipment is over half the fun of homebrewing.

Me too. I've built things I haven't even used yet.

[BrewHound]

No you don't, as I said I like the idea of the PID for the purpose of set it forget it type thing. As I don't like to sit in the brewery while I am waiting for boil to get up to temp which can take a while. As for the power control thing, I think you are better to have some control versus full up on or off. There would be quite a bit that goes into how much power is required such as

size of boil, (5, 10, 15 gal?)
Shape of boil kettle
Thermal mass of kettle
temperature of brewing enviroment (basement or outside)

For the little cost of a light dimmer switch it does not make good sense not to filter the power through one to add the control. As for the PID they cost about $30, again for the convience of not having to sit in the brewery waiting for the boil, seems well worth it to me.

For my first system, I built a phase-controlled "dimmer" switch (note that the kind you can find at Menards are not rated for the power levels you'll be asking them to control and I have no idea where you can find one rated for brewing duty). I've since moved on to an analog PWM controller driving an SSR, which costs a bit more (b/c you need to buy an SSR), but gives linear power control, whereas the dimmer switch approach was highly non-linear (e.g. 80% of the power was controlled within about 20% of the dial). That being said, I bet something like using 2 elements and just turning one of them off once you hit boil would work pretty well. It certainly seems like a good starting point. What's the worst that could happen? You could always wire the two in parallel and have them driven by a common control element later on, if it didn't work. I find that building and experimenting with the equipment is over half the fun of homebrewing.

CJ, you make a good point about the PID keeping you from needing to watch the BK too closely. It typically takes me 15-20 minutes from the end of the sparge until I can get a good boil going (longer in winter). Being able to set it and forget it would be pretty nice. I typically use that time to shovel out the mash tun and start working through my cleanup steps.

Dang, I am usually too drunk to do that stuff by that time, that is something for the next day!

[czubak]

Thinking about making one to supplement my propane system and save some propane heating strike water and helping with getting to a boil. I'd go with a ~1500W piece to not tax my electrical system. Anyone see this being worth the DIY investment or just buy another propane tank. I am still using my 20#er on my grill and 2 - 5 gallon batches on it already. Doubt I'll trust it to get my batch this weekend completed without taking it in for a refill.

http://www.3d0g.net/brewing/heatstick