2000 - 2500 watt RIMS tube on 50L mash tun

[Cain Harland]

I was looking at setting up a gas fired HERMS rig but I had a thought last night that a RIMS tube would cost a fraction of what I would spend on automating my gas burners and would have the added bonus of being able to be used as a temperature boost while heating the HLT and kettle.

So 3 questions:

1) 2000 - 2500 watt sufficient, my new mash tun is a 50 L pot (not quite finished) and I usually do 40L brews, have been using 28L of strike water but that's in my old chilly bin mash tun. I don't have much interest in step mashing. Would just mash in slightly cold and use it to get the last couple degrees (just to reduce the risk of miscalculating strike temp and ending up to hot). Then it would maintain temperature. And maybe heat to mash out if that wasn't too slow (I have never had equipment to mash out before and don't think its been an issue). Running it on a 10amp outlet is really a deal breaker for me as paying a sparky to wire up a 30amp one would bring the price up to rival the temp controlled gas burner and HERMS loop option.

2) Has any experienced scorching with a RIMS tube? Is it a real risk? I will put a thermal probe on outlet and stc-1000 or similar to switch on.

3) Has any one got one of these or similar

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/RIMS-Tube-Assembly-1-5-Tri-... - RIMS Tube

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Heating-Element-Adapter-Sta... - element fitting

Any suggestions for alternatives or an element that would work with this?

[Cain Harland]

More questions on elements
1) is there any materials I need to look for or avoid for an element that's going in my beer.
2) most of the elements I have found have BSP therad and the RIMS kit I'm looking at has NPS any suggestions on where to find an appropriate one.

[DMAC]

1) not really. Stainless or the stuff Camco is coated in is good enough

2) NPS threads are meant to work with the American NPT threaded elements. So if you get  those kits you need to source an american element too. There is loads available online with the Camco ones being the most popular. Only issue is that it is hard to source a 220 -240 volt one in the 2-3kW range. I have Camco "ULWD" 2.5kW ones but they arent ULWD. more like medium watt density. Im my setup i get about 2.1 to 2.2 kW out of them with about 220V applied.

[Cain Harland]

Ever had scorching issues?
How fast is your temprature increase with one of those and how many liter you heating

[DMAC]

I haven't had scorching during the boil but haven't done anything over 1060. There are quite a few people that say scorching is not a real issue. If you search around its hard to find evidence. Also scorching is more likely in the kettle by my reckoning. At mash temps it must be less likely because of the lower temperature of the wort.

With 4.2kW (I have two elements in the HLT) I raise 50 litres from 23 to 72C in about 45 minutes I think. putting in my guess at your numbers (2kW, 10 degree rise for mashout of 30litres) it would take 10minutes.

Water power calculator

[Cain Harland]

Thanks for all that. Defiantly looking like a go over the drama/expense of automating my gas setup. And using it as a booster along with the gas getting the HLT and Kettle up to temp should be real fast.

[DMAC]

Re the first post.

1)2000w should be sufficient to raise a mash tun temp. The electric brewery has to also raise the HLT temp so they raise 20gallon/80litres using 4500w elements. So you could heat the 20-30 litres in your mash tun in a reasonable time for step mashes. I heat 50 litres with about 4kw quite quickly (something liek 15 minutes) for mash out (66C - 76C).

[Rhys Williams]

Hi,

I have a 30L kettle I use for Mash and boil. It used to have a 2Kw element that I replaced with a 3kW, so this is drawing approx 13 Amps.

For the strike water I used about 18L, and I fill from the hot water tap, which comes out at 55c (Gas heated) and I get to 74c in about 10 mins.

When it comes to boil time with a volume of 28L, it heats approx 1 deg/min.

So I would have through 2.5 Kw should be adequate for your application. The other thing you can do is use 2x2Kw elements, and run then 2nd when heating off a different outlet.

Cheers

Rhys

[Cain Harland]

thanks Rhys

I had seen some folks using the 2 elements off different outlets trick but I think 1 should be sufficient for my job (heating a couple of degrees at mash in and maintaining temp).

If I can get to mash out quickly with it great but if it is too slow on 2kw I'm happy to miss it as I'm getting decent efficiency and I think my current process probably halts enzymatic activity as fast as mashing out with an under powered element might. I've been doing a kind of hybrid batch/fly sparge lately when I drain the first running's into the kettle (batch sparge style) fairly quickly and light the burner once I have say 5L in there, then once the flow slows fill the mash tun again and slowly fly sprage from there. So in terms of stopping the enzymatic activity I figure most of the enzymes and the sugars they work on are in the kettle pretty quickly being heated to mash out temperature and the sparge water heats the rest. Someone might tell me why I'm wrong and mash out would be better.