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.

[Daniel Ashman]

Can anyone comment if an element that is at or below 2300W (so it can be run off a standard 10A plug socket) will be enough for a 50L pot with no insulation (heat fast enough and hold a good rolling boil). It's just a cheap trademe pot. If so can anyone recommend a good brand and distributor? I'm sure I can get trade prices through some electrician friends. This is for BIAB at this stage but will eventually turn into my boil pot.

The camco ultra low watt density ones start at 2500W. I'm worried that might be too high. It's pretty old wiring in our rental property with ceramic fuse wire fuses and no RCDs. Don't want to burn the place down! I have just been heating on multiple ring elements on my stove top thus far but can't get a good rolling boil.

Sorry if this has already been discussed in older posts. This thread is getting pretty big.

[Peter Smith]

Thats not enough for 50L put two elements into the pot , buy some heavy duty bunning extension leads and run each off a different breaker from your house (out windows etc as required....), I run 2 x 2200w stainless ones in a 46L pot, it actually imho struggles to boil 27L on one element...   fine on 2 elements.

I have a love hate relationship with the stainless elements, I had to replace them but to be fair the new ones seem ok, was due to bad early design.  will link you thread later on.      in winter you need to boil away from wind/rain but with 50L and 4.4kw it will produce serious steam, if in a garage you need extraction of some kind or you will have condensation dripping on you  etc etc

[Scott H]

I would strongly recommend not brewing electric without RCD protection.

[Daniel Ashman]

Agreed. I will use inline RCDs

[Daniel Ashman]

Out of interest what brand are your stainless elements? Have you got any pics of how you mounted them in the pot?

[Peter Smith]

keg king, but the new design,   I am actually happy with the new design the old ones where rubbish, I am still very carefull never to move the cables while they are hot....  see this thread.

http://www.forum.realbeer.co.nz/forum/topics/new-element-suggestion

also read this good guide

http://www.forum.realbeer.co.nz/profiles/blogs/electric-keggle-hlt-...  I didn't want to have to re-drill the pot so just replaced them,  the new ones have now done about 20 brews and show no signs of the old problems...   if they go again thats it.    I have a keg with a 5500w amazon one, I just need to wire to board a decent outlet.

If starting from scratch...   I would probably avoid the keg king ones....

this is unrelated but is electricty related just got this to lift out grain tube in BM, saw a german guy using one on a HBW video

[DMAC]

Those camcos are 2500w at 240v. In my set up they run 2100 to 2200w because the line voltage is 215 to 220v. At the nominal 230v they would be 2300w.
They are far from ulwd. They are a lot shorter than stated in specs which is a common complaint on Amazon for instance. however I haven't had scorching and there is some querying on the net whether scorching is an issue since there isn't much hard evidence.

As with peter I don't think one is enough though. Even if you could get it to boil it would take ages to get there and really make your brew day drag on. Probably an extra 2 hours at least including strike water heating..

I concur about the RCD being required. 15 bucks each so not worth scrimping on.

[Scott H]

Is that only an issue with the 2500w ones DMAC, cause I can defo confirm no scorching with the 5500w ones after 10-15 brews so far.

[DMAC]

Yeah the 5500 w ones are safe as houses. The 2500w ones unfortunately dont have the same ulwd as their big brothers.having said that. I haven't had any scorching with the 2500w ones and I boil on full power with two in a fifty litre pot- so I would use them again my self.

[Daniel Ashman]

have you got any pics of how you mounted them?

[DMAC]

I used 1" NPS welding spuds which I got off Amazon at the same time. See the link below. need a welder though...

http://www.forum.realbeer.co.nz/profiles/blogs/the-beer-robot-lives

These camco / american types don't have any earth lug so I had to make my own.

[Scott H]

Can also be done weildless as per www.theelectricbrewery.com