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.

[Adam Sparks]

Hey Daniel

Almost everything is from ebay, sestos stuff from the seller mixtea. I like it, don't have anything to compare it with but it all works quite well! My only gripe is that the pid alarms don't seem to go off when they hit the set temperature, it takes a few minutes and usually goes off when its a degree or two higher, Im not sure why that is.

The stainless coil is a custom order form http://www.stainlessbrewing.com They are great to deal with and landed cost was probably about $150 (I think). There's no way to get them in NZ at a reasonable price afaik. They also offer cam lock fittings very cheap, but most of mine came form INZhydro in Hamilton, the business was sold on a while ago but the new guy there is keen to keep that end of the business going so perhaps give them a call if your in the market

[Scott H]

I tried to get some camlocks from INZHydro (Now FPD - Fisher Pope Deisel) and they had none, they were going to order some in and let me know when they arrived but I never heard anything and when I contacted them about it they knew nothing. So in the end I just order Quick Disconnects from Alixpress.

[Scott H]

Yeah I defo happy with it Barry. Clean up is no more than it was before. It's good knowing I can hold the temp with .5c reliably once I get the system dialed in abut more I might try a step mash but one thing at a time.

About the only other upgrade I could really wish for is a better pump or 2. Only using cheap ones from alixpress but they are working mint as so far just not rated for over 80c

[DMAC]

Hi Guys,

I'm planning my electric brewery and I am starting to think about elements to heat the kettle and HLT. I will use two 10amp lines to drive the brewery since I don't have a dedicated 35 amp line. I think this is reasonably straight forward from the control panel side but am wondering what elements to use. Has anyone got a good source of 2 - 2.4kW elements?

I contacted Smiths (seac.co.nz) and the dual element types mentioned elsewhere in this thread (SWE72 and SWE73) are not made anymore. The single element low watt density SLW2 is available $67.15 ex GST & Freight. But I need 4 of them!

Anyone know of any international sources?

Cheers

Daniel

[Patrick]

I'm planning on doing the same method, I was going to look at getting a bigger outlet wired in but I am only renting so don't want the hassle of negotiating an extra outlet in my future homes. I will be watching this with interest - and would be interested in combining an order if you find a good international source. I will need 2 elements. I am just going run a SSVR with a pot on one of them, and run the other one direct. Keeping it simple at first.

[DMAC]

Happy to combine on shipping.

These ones look good on spec:

camco 2500w low watt density

But the feedback is not so good as they are a lot shorter than in the description so are a higher watt density that the specs say. I wonder if it really matters that it is 6 inches long - this is not that different than the electric brewery camco 5.5kW ones from a watt density point of view from what I figure (maybe 50% higher?)

[Patrick]

Hi mate

Have you settled on an element choice yet? I can either buy my elements and SSVR this month or the copper for my chiller.

Cheers

Patrick

[Scott H]

The 5500w ones are around 30cm long double blades and fold back in a curve. For your HLT you prob don't really need low watt density ones.

Running multiple 10a elements while feasible is prob going to cause some headaches.

[DMAC]

Interested to know what the headaches are other than needing twice as many leads and twice as many holes on my pots?

electrically my plan is to run a pair of SSRs off the same PID output to control both elements which will run at the same time. The SSRs are optically isolated so this seams reasonable to me.

I'll use and extra pair of DPDT relays to switch the both lines from hlt to kettle.

My most interesting question revolves around RCDs and what the effect of grounding two power lines to the chassis will be. I think it will be alright though...

[Scott H]

Mostly issues with diagnosing if you had problems somewhere in the system.

Grounding both earths in different RCDs won't cause any problems as it's common to both.

An RCD only uses phase & neutral to measure for earth leakage current.

[Barry]

Greame get your L6 stuff from ebay, you will struggle to find panel mount sockets but I used these wall ones to great effect:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/251304384875?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&a...

and these plugs:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/261332307088?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&a...

So much cheaper than anything local rated to 30A. 25A ones were going to cost me well over $120!

I got my pump/10A ones locally though, still expensive but doable and you can get them anywhere (Bunnings etc).

For wire, you will want to convert AWG to mm2. What current do you expect to be drawing?

For my 4500W elements I used 2.5mm2 – only one will be on at a time so I'm expecting no more than 21A draw at any one time (one element and both pumps running).

If you're drawing over 25A you'd probably want to move to 4mm2 wire.

For the rest of your panel – all the low draw stuff, 1.0mm2 wire will work fine. You can get 2.5mm2 and 1.0mm2 wire at Bunnings or Mitre 10, for 4mm2 you might want to find a friendly sparky and talk about trade prices, copper starts to get pretty costly.

[DMAC]

I like digikey. Its aimed at electronic engineers making products or doing R&D but they have enough stuff to be useful. order over 140NZD and shipping is free and arrives in about 3 days from the US.

They dont have the plugs but they have a good range of hook up wire.

hook up wire

10 gauge (5mm^2) 600v stuff is a bit dear: 10ft of 10 AWG

they don't have any 12 awg (3.3mm^2) aside from 100ft rolls which are expensive.

if you can live with 14 gauge (2mm^2) then there are few options. Where are others getting this stuff from locally - I always get screwed going to electrical wholesalers (even though they would have a better range) .