Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

I've been toying around with the idea of doing an electric mash tun for awhile now but never liked the idea of installing an immersion heater inside my MLT (I don't even have a thermometer inside there). After a few days of serious thought and digging through my heap of spare parts, I finally came up with something that works.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33275630@N ... 565030235/

I removed the heating element from a broken Stir Crazy popcorn popper, built a quasi-brick-oven base for my MLT, and slid the heating element into the cavity below the MLT. The nichrome wire in the heating element measured around 13 Ohms, which translates to 1100W of power. Many people run RIMS systems with immersion heaters at 1500W, so I figured this was good enough for a test case, despite all the indirect heating losses that would probably occur.

After a few tweaks (removing charred wood, adding tubing insulation, etc.) it worked pretty well. The brick oven cavity got to around 600F and the 5 gallons of water inside the MLT rose at a rate of around 0.5F per minute. With some additional tweaks to reduce thermal loss, I think this could get closer to 1.5F per minute, which is probably not enough to do a step mash, but should suffice to preheat an MLT.

My thoughts with this are to enable a fully controllable, electric, direct-fired MLT without needing to install a hot water heater element. For anyone with a metallic MLT, all they would need is a Johnson controller and an electric element (taken from a toaster oven, electric grill, popcorn popper, etc.) to have a very precise, set-it-and-forget-it strike water temp controller. Additionally, it permits recirculation during the mash with no heat loss.

I'm going to keep tinkering with this concept, as time permits, and will let you guys know if I make this viable for step mashes. If anyone wants to know more about this approach, don't hestitate to ask.

Lee,
I am interested in getting an electric brewery going for this winter. I have been reading The Electric Brewery site often. I am just planning on my Rubbermaid cooler as a mash tun and maybe step infusion mashes if needed. Also will continue to tinker with decoction mashes. Do you do step infusion mashes right now or single infusion? I guess I'm wondering why you need to direct heat your mash tun. I was just listening to Can You Brew It about cloning and Tasty McDole said he uses the same amount of strike water volume for whatever brew he is doing. This results in some thin mashes and some thick and he doesn't have any problems. I was figuring on starting with a thick mash (1qt/lb) and boiling water infusing for the steps. I can get to 2qt/lb and should still have no problems. Any thoughts?

Let me know if you want any help putting together an electric brewery. The site you referenced is really great and has very detailed plans to start from scratch, but there is plenty of room to tailor a system to your specific preferences if you want to do something different.

I typically do single infusions, but I've tried step mashes with infusions of boiling water and/or steam in the past. Honestly, I'm not sure I can justify why you would ever need to do step mashes, but I'll probably design a RIMS or HERMS system in the future just for the challenge of it (this drives the vast majority of my equipment experiments). I'm also toying with the idea of doing 10 minute mashes in the near future, just to see if it's possible.

I don't need to direct heat my mash tun, I just wanted to see if it were possible to do with electric heating elements, much like some folks do with gas burners. I like to tinker and enjoy building/designing brewing equipment just as much if not more than brewing beer. Furthermore, I appreciate the challenge of doing as much as possible with recycled equipment (e.g. the heating element from a broken popcorn popper). Even though I do not need it, I'll probably start using the brick oven heater to pre-heat my MLT just because I can. Remember the engineer's code -- "If it isn't broken, it doesn't have enough features yet."

That's awesome, Lee! I've already got a large cooler and a converted pony keg. Now I just need a 9-10 gal brew pot. Then it's getting the heating elements together and finding a way to wire 240v outlet into my basement. I may get around to it this year or next, we'll see. I'll definitely be picking your brain and probably request a brew session with you to see the electric in action.