I've found the one major downside to electric brewing

When your power goes out during the middle of the brew day, you're completely at the mercy of your power company.

45 minutes into the mash, whooooom. Power goes out. Thankfully my sparge water was already hot, so I fly sparged with gravity, collected all the wort in the kettle and waited. Took 3 hours before it came back on.

Whew, what a brew day.

Glad to hear that it still worked out ok! Maybe the name the beer after the event? What kind of beer was it?

My rig is hybrid (electric/propane), and I always have propane regardless of my utilities.

It was a Blonde Ale. We'll probably call it SRP Sucks (SRP is the power company), Power Outage Blonde, or High Voltage Blonde. Not sure yet.

The funny part is: Saturday the power went out from 3pm-5pm. There were some storms in the area, so I assumed that was the reason. So come Sunday, I actually thought, "What are the odds of the power going out again?" Apparently, the odds are pretty f'ing good, since it went out at almost the exact time.

Auto transfer switch and 10kW generator connected to your control panel and you'd never know the difference. Just some more essential brewing gear

haha, swmbo will love that idea.

During the storms that hit the DC area a few weeks ago, Port City Brewing Co lost power while in the midst of fermenting a 13,000 gallon batch! Temps were over 100*F during the week-long outage. They managed to MacGyver a semi-solution... either way, it's a fun read. http://dcist.com/2012/07/still_without_power_port_city_brewe.php

scottland said:

When your power goes out during the middle of the brew day, you're completely at the mercy of your power company.

45 minutes into the mash, whooooom. Power goes out. Thankfully my sparge water was already hot, so I fly sparged with gravity, collected all the wort in the kettle and waited. Took 3 hours before it came back on.

Whew, what a brew day.

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I still keep my propane burner along with a cheapo 5 gal kettle around for just such an emergency. The kettle and burner come in handy for heating up decoction mashes too. Fortunately our power company is pretty good - haven't had a major outage in a couple years (knock on wood).