Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

czubak wrote:

andrewmaixner wrote:Used it to heat my mash-out water in a cooler (5gal at about 125F-->175F) during my 1 hour mash. Worked well. Would have used it to heat my strike water but I was in a hurry that morning.

I need to see if any of my coolers would work to heat strike/sparge. I think that would be more efficient. I use an old turkey fryer pot from my extract days. I worked great for strike, but for sparge I needed to add a flame to get it to temp within an hour.

~5 gallons in my 10 gallon kettle or 70qt cooler won't allow the element to reach the water.

I used the 5Gal Menards-branded water cooler that they sell for $10 after rebate a few times a year.

If you are going to immersion-heat the strike water in your boil kettle, you could wrap a natural fiber blanket, or that silver stuff people put around mash tun keggles, around it to retain heat better.


I just adjusted my strike volume up so that a 5Gal sparge would hit my desired volume -- with all the full-volume-no-sparge and BIAB stuff people do nowadays, it's pretty much proven that a high water/grain ratio doesn't matter as long as you have the right pH and temperature.

I remembered that I also threw the anova in my strike water heating kettle, on the propane burner, for faster heating and easy temperature measurement. This thing is handy.

Did my first all electric mash, inside, today, using the ANOVA. It was handy not having to run up and down stairs for every task when switching between brewing and other stuff.

Note: a Coleman 70+ qt cooler needs at least 11 gallons of water, and something to prop it at an angle, for the ANOVA to reach the water level.

That's a lot of volume. I'm planning on a few low gravity no sparge brews and wondered if it could get that much water up to mash temp. I use the same cooler


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Yes, it definitely can. I used the lid, offset, and covered/filled the opening on both sides with some towels to hold heat. Only took about 1.2 hours to take 11.5 gallons from 126 to 162.

Two more uses of my Anova recently:
1) decrease heating time on stove-top single-batch, hold temp for steep / mini-mash.
2) circulation (heat turned way down) with immersion chiller, so I don't have to sit there and stir for 15 minutes

Used it for both purposes lat night, as I fit in a mostly-extract batch on the stove while also cooking dinner and wrangling two kids. (Hadn't made a new batch in months, and it was time )

Way to squeeze in a brew. Not always easy but I bet you are glad you got one in.

Matt F wrote:Way to squeeze in a brew. Not always easy but I bet you are glad you got one in.

Ya, this was an irish red extract+ kit that I got a while ago for St. Patrick's day. Not quite going to be ready in time!

Excellent idea of using the circulation function during the chill down. Were there any issues with cleaning wort off the immersion coil later? I've often used mine to heat up sparge water, so it never comes in contact with wort.

tony b wrote:Excellent idea of using the circulation function during the chill down. Were there any issues with cleaning wort off the immersion coil later? I've often used mine to heat up sparge water, so it never comes in contact with wort.

I didn't look at how shiny the heating element was before I started, but I just hit it with a dishwashing/bottle brush afterwords, and the minimal amount of visible stuff, internally and externally, seemed to come right off.

Great, good to know. May try this with my next brew, as I'm like you and hate standing there stirring by hand. I will probably have the Anova in the brew room for the sparge water anyway, so might as well make use of it.