Kettles

[jt]

Ok, may have some extra cash shortly, maybe time to look at mash tun or kettle.

probably kettle first, current one struggles to hold 23 litres at a good boil but the insulated pail tun will cope with 5kg plus a bit

What's the opinion on what's out there ?

The 40 litre urns from trademe - Dan, don't you have one of those - what's the deadspace, how's the 2000w element manage to get a boil going ?

Mr Houghs 55 litre polarware - would you dare drill a hole to fit an element in that ?

Converted keg ?

I'm staying electric, I know we've had a great summer, but I'm going to stay inside the garage where it's gunna be warm in winter

any good tips, tricks, hints or good buys out there ?

cheers, jt

[Richard Jack]

I got some that would probably be closer to 7mm - 9mm? probably the same stuff as hugh's sleeping mats, haha.

[MrC]

So, after another long wait I can confirm that insulating the kettle made only a small difference to the timings.  I created a graph in Excel to show the differences between the insulated and uninsulated timings but the two lines on the graph were so similar that I could only make out one line.  It still took 50 min to get from 62C to 100C which is too slow for what I'm after.  

Time to rethink...

[jt]

Was that lid on or off ?

[MrC]

Lid was on except when taking the temperature every 10 min.

[jt]

Bugger.

 

[Stu H]

What I'm thinking about doing is running an all electric off the power plugs on the side of the stove, with a high current rated extension down to the brewery.... They're rated to handle a total of around 16amps for a start...

I was talking to a friend of mine who reckoned you could just put a higher rated fuse in the stove to get even higher amperage too. Any electricians out there to confirm/deny?

 

I'd really love to go all-electric, but as I'm flatting I can't just go get the brewery re-wired!

[Paul Wicksteed - another1]

I have gone all electric with my home brewery, running 2 x 2000w elements in my Keggle, and 1 x 1500w in my HTL, then a future 800w for the MashTun RIM tube. So all up I have to install 32amp plugs for the power supply going to the control panel, and then standard 10amp plugs going out to each individually controlled element. 

 

I have circuit breakers built in, but you have to make sure the amount of amps that are being pulled, all go through that amperage rated link, otherwise the weakest link will overheat and blow. For short burst you could get away with it, but for an 90min boil thats a lot of heat.

[Stu H]

Yeah I hear that. I figure though that the plug on the side of the oven is going to be rated to handle pretty high heat/current, as some kind of safety factor, due to it being an oven an all.

[Cascade]

I'm planning on using a 3kW element in my HLT, and spoke to a sparkie on the weekend.  He says that the standard power point supply (circuit break and wiring in the wall) will be fine to handle the 13 amps it will pull.  All I need to do is swap the 10amp power point with a 15 amp socket (he says the 10 amp socket is the only weak point - it would likely melt).  I use a 15amp plug and 1.5mm2 flex cable so that is all fine.