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]

Ah there we go yes it shows 236V when not under load, as soon as the element is on it drops to 222V. The outlet is about 2 feet from the fuse box and its all brand spanking new so I doubt thats the issue, although the connection to the house is a good 50 years old.

Thanks for the link!

[Scott H]

Your voltage will also fluctuate when the load in your house changes ie, Dryer or cook top ect.

I can confirm for you tho that the 5.5kw elements even de rated to just below 5kw will easily boil 50L I tested it a while back with one of my Sestos PIDs and it boils nicely at 80% cycle. Takes a bit of time to get to the boil. Also takes my HLT about 30-40 min to heat 50-55L of water to 66c for mashing depending on ground temp of the water. (Testing this as we speak as well as leak checking for tomorrows pilot brew.)

[Adam Sparks]

Im just stabbing in the dark without a decent meter to test but it certainly seems like the readings are not accurate, at the very least both elements should have shown a similar numb rI would have thought. It took about the same amount of time to heat my strike liquor, and boil form mash out was just under 20 minutes It certainly doesn't seem as under powered as the numbers suggest

[Adam Sparks]

23L batch

[Adam Sparks]

and now the boil element shows about 16 amps.... Perhaps my placement of the donut is not ideal? I have it kind of hard up against the power relay and the its a reasonably long run up to the meter

[Scott H]

It takes around 20m of 2.5mm cable for voltage drop to be noticeable. I Am currently drawing 22.6a @ 236V

[Scott H]

I would find someone with proper meters and check with those, it maybe that your meter requires calibration.

[Adam Sparks]

I think so... I have a really aggressive boil at %65 duty.... And no way that I can see to calibrate this meter

[Scott H]

I would say that your prob fine then Adam. Something to maybe just double check at some point but if no issues boiling , ramping ect....

This was really one of the issues I thought about having the volt/amp meter in a panel hence why I skipped it. You would know if it wasn't drawing anything or not enough cause it would take ages to heat or not heat at all. It would end up been a spot or paranoia for me.

[Peter Smith]

there is no way that little donut is going to be as accurate as 

http://www.trademe.co.nz/business-farming-industry/industrial/elect...

And these are still not down to the calibrated 1% mark..

I would relax but just clamp/test it one day, you can borrow mine.   If you ever pull too much current, your breaker will blow...  I read that Kai put that in there as the us guys double there 120v to make 240...

[Peter Smith]

last thought - have the element turned OFF go and turn on your electric stove, dryer, heaters  etc etc etc in house, if the voltage reading is low, it means that there is a decent voltage drop occurring between your house and the nearest transformer when under load, nothing you can do about.

[Adam Sparks]

It certainly seems that it's just the meter. My household appliances don't make any difference. At any rate as Scott has mentioned it's no biggie. Everything is working just fine. Finished the brew day cleaned and had a beer in 5 hrs. I love not having to unplug hoses and shake the fricken gas bottle every ten minutes to keep the boil up. Saves so much time!