Electric Brewery's

[Scott H]

We spoke about creating a discussion so people who have or people who are thinking about and/or building can share pic's info and pitfalls to avoid.

Just about finished building my bench and hopefully will have a chance to start wiring it up this weekend. Pics to follow shortly.

[Barry]

If your electricity supply can handle it I'd definitely upgrade to the 5.5kw for that size boil. You won't need to muck around with your panel either, pretty clean upgrade.
They're cheap on Amazon too right now.

[Scott H]

They de rate slightly for nz 230V supply.
But not by much. My 5.5s run at about 5 output

[Scott H]

The electric brewery site guy says that their design which uses 5.5kw elements will maintain the boil on 10-20galon batches. But rather the redo all you've already done why not try boosting the boil with one of the 2.4kw immersion elements. That way you could have the 2.4 on all the time and still switch the 4.5 with the PID to control the boil

[Scott H]

How's your electrickrery coming. Barry?

[Barry]

Good mate, all wired up ready for testing. Just need to write a blog post.

[Scott H]

Awesome look forward to seeing it. And hearing about your first brew.

[Paws Xa]

Hmm an extra 2.4 Kw immersion element is beyond my electrical supply. The US type elements are also out as they use a different thread size and I have a welded 1.25 inch BSP thread in my kettle. The biggest element I can find that will fit is 5 Kw which would gain me 500w. Hope thats enough.

Any thoughts on Insulating the Kettle?

[Scott H]

You could run the 2.4 from a different circuit via extension lead as it would only be 10a.

As for kettle insulation maybe one of those emergency blankets or a hot water cylinder wrap.

[Paws Xa]

Went in to Forman building systems, They didn't have the foil backed adhesive foam so I grabbed some 19mm Armaflex. Did a test run today boiling some water, managed to get a good rolling boil going but had to have the lid half on to maintain it which I can live with. Wort does require a slightly higher temp to boil than water so will be interesting to see what happens next brew day.

[mattd2]

What was the cost for an incoloy one? And what is the base made out of, SS or brass?
Cheers!

[GFbeerGuy]

Im in a slow process of building a new HERMS system this conversation has helped a lot so thanks guys! Ive just got a few questions on my build. In my HLT i sit my HERMS coil (which also doubles as my immersion chiller) to keep the temperature consistent i picked up a ramp/soak PID with a RTD sensor from Aubers (cheers Barry), however, i cant quite figure out where the best place to put the RTD would be? Since i don't have  inlet and outlet ball valve's i cant place it there. Would it be best to place it in the MT to get a true reading of the wort temp? Also Scott H with your 5.5KW element did you buy it with the Waterproof casing or did you make it yourself?

[Scott H]

I just bought the bits as per www.theelectricbrewery.com and made the element enclosure myself.

Best place for the RTD sensor is going to be in the flow of liquid either exiting the MT or entering the coil.