E-kettle

[Matt]

Thought I should publish the kettle I built for the E-brewery.

It is based around a budget ~80L pot off trademe, I found it really difficult to find a good quality pot larger than 60L, but am happy how it came out in the end.

The hop screen is 1.6mm hole size perforated stainless and is profiled to the radius of the pot. A lot easier welding this than the 0.5mm thick, 0.9mm hole size perforated sheet that I used to make the hop screen for our larger system!  The front plate is removable which made the unit more difficult to make but definitely makes it simple to clean. There is a 90 degree stainless pickup tube that the very handy Richard J kindly turned down to fit the 1/2" compression fitting that it connects to.

The element is a 5500W low density one as used in www.theelectricbrewery.com pots, and a sparky mate of mine wired in a dedicated 32a circuit to run it. The terminal cover I made out of a stainless 'bain marie' tray, and screwed down on the 5mm EVA pot cladding it seals the terminal enclosure nicely. There is a 1mm drain hole in the bottom in case there are any leaks through the element coupling.

The pot is run by a 'Sestos' PID and 40a SSR that can be had for a hard-to-believe price off ebay. These are mounted in a waterproof junction box which should make the assembly weather/wort proof. Temp feedback is provided by an RTD sensor in the side of the pot.

 

So far I have only put through a couple of batches but one was a 1.122 American barleywine which gave it a good workout. The kettle performed well though I was surprised that I didnt actually need to trim the element that much to keep the boil where I wanted so was glad I sized the element the way I did (I was shooting for overkill). With that much malt and a 3hr boil there were big golf balls of hot break and with the nearly 10g/L of hops the hop screen still managed to cope.

Next up - a 6kw HLT 

[Stu H]

Very tidy, looks awesome! Do you have 3-phase at your pad?

[Matt]

Nope, just single phase, but on a dedicated 32a circuit outside on the side of my house. Got all the electrical connectors, and socket outlet ex demolition so didnt end up being too expensive to set up...

[Stu H]

Awesome, what a great idea! 

[Stu H]

btw what demolition spot do you goto? I just spent an afternoon lurking around Wards and Heap & Sharp trying to find a steel bench to no avail.

[Matt]

Demolition as in trademe, I think quite a few of these bits came from Chch!

[Adam Sparks]

How is the terminal cover screwed to the pot? Is there a plate behind the clading? or do the screws go into the side of the ketle?

Great looking build! Love it!

[Matt]

Gday. I took some M5 stainless cap screws and ground the head down until there was maybe 1mm of head left, and then welded this 'flange' to the outside of the pot. This means you cant wind a nut hard down onto the surface of the pot due to the thickness of what is left of the screw head but with the 5mm EVA foam this forms a gasket so still allows the cover to clamp down to seal. Hope this makes sense, the nice thing about doing it this was is you dont have to drill holes in the pot!