Post pics of your electric brew pot

I live in an apartment but have been brewing at work on a large kitchen stove. This limits me to Saturday mornings for brewing. My apartment has a 240v plug in the wall where my A/C is plugged in and in the winter it would be nice to hook up an electric brew pot and just make the batch inside. (would the neighbors call the cops from the hops smell?:rockin: )

Anyway, I've found a few pictures of different pots but was wondering if all you guys who do electric could share a few pictures as well as how it works and what type of element you use.

I think it would be cool to get a nice big cheap aluminum pot and insulate it, add the appropriate valve, heater, and lid and be able to brew while not having to leave the house.

MikeInCtown said:

(would the neighbors call the cops from the hops smell?:rockin: )

Click to expand...

I don't think you have nothing to worry about. While Humulus lupulus may be a close relative to Cannabis sativa, the smell isn't quite the same.

I will say that the similarity is there, but only as somebody with experience with both would know.:cross:

I dunno, what does everybody else think?

Well you can get away with a 3000 Watt element but I would go with a 4500 watt hot water tank heater.

Make sure its low density so you don't scorch the wort.

It really depends I guess what the size of batches you want to do.

4500 will be too much for 5 gallons you will get boil overs.

I would use a 3000 watt 220v and a 120v 1500 watt together to bring to a boil.

then when its boiling unplug the 220V 3000 watt and keep the 1500 watt plugged in this will keep a nice rolling boil.

Also SS or aluminum is preferred but I have seen guys rig up a 6-7 gallon plastic fermenter and have great success.


You will have to check what the amperage in the breaker box is for the double poled plug.

220/300=your going to need 15 amps to run that 300o watt element. and 15 amps for the 120 volt 1500 watt.

This would be your best bet unless your going technical and rig up something to lower the heat to the element.

You might want to make sure you have some sort of exhaust fan (a real one that causes air to leave the building, not the cheap ones that sit over your stove and blow steam right back into the room).

Otherwise you may find the walls peeling paint/wallpaper and growing mold after you brew. There's a lot of water involved.

I brew on my electric kitchen stove, using a canning element (about 2500 watts) and a 10 gallon pot. Not the fastest setup in the world, but it works, it has an exhaust fan (a real one with a duct to the outside), and it only cost $30 (I guess around $60 now) for the element - which you can take with you to the next apartment if you don't lose the original large element you'll be replacing with it. As the pricing information implies, they last a long time...

If your apartment is carpeted, that's a strike against working outside the kitchen, as is lack of access to the sink.

Some pics of my old setup. My new one is a "2 1/2" tier setup"



This shows the dryer cord going into an electrical box that is jb welded to the pot. The element end is in the box. There is a ground wire running up to a small bolt toward the top of the pot. The small wire is to the thermocoupler.


Water proof switches and the PID. On this one, I used my BK as the HLT as well and collected wort into another pot the added into BK after sparge. New one is more "traditional" 3 vessel setup.


I used a disconnect box on my supply cord. Supply cord is a 50A 4 prong range plug. The plug's receptical is on a dedicated GFCI circuit. Not sure if you can change you distribution box, but you may could insert a GFCI in before your brew cart.

Boiling that much indoors without some awesome ventilation makes for a ton of moisture buildup. I brew in my garage and even with both doors open, my concrete gets wet and slick from all of the moisture I am putting in the air and the temp in the garage goes up quite a bit.

I heat my mash and my HLT with electric but boil using gas. Is this possible for you? Mash and sparge indoors, boil outside?

Boiling outside would probably be bad at this point but you never know. I would have to go out by the pavilion we have here. I have a few large box fans that I can put in the window for air removal.

Up until now I haven't had a problem because I would just use the kitchen at work. (large hood, commercial range, tons of water available, large steel sinks, and best of all, tons of square feet of no wood or carpet on the floors.) It would just seem easier to do this at home. Perhaps I should hold off considering winter coming up. Maybe spring would be better to start experimenting.

Frankly the kitchen at work sounds ideal, though I'm sure that going in on Saturday may not seem ideal. I have much more limited access to a similar setup, and would be happy to get it every Saturday - though I admit I'm not crazy about hauling the wort and equipment around.

You might consider the half-sized batch stovetop all-grain (or full-sized partial mash) as described by Deathbrewer for an easy apartment approach. If he's whipping these out in 3 hours after work, he's getting a lot of brewing (and bbq dinner) done.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-partial-mash-brewing-pics-75231/

Ecnerwal, I went in to the office this morning to get some stuff done. While there I slapped two pots on the stove and actually found the covers for them. 1/2 hour to boil two pots, one with 6.5 gallons and the other with 6 gallons. I found out that 1 hour boil with the lid on gets me only a little over half a gallon evaporation. If I take the lid off for 15 minutes I get the rest of a gallon.

I think I'll just stick with the kitchen for now and just suck up the gas cost to get there. I can't compete with a commercial environment that is made for stuff like this. What's really cool is that I also found most of the parts needed for my mash tun in my box of leftover parts (Coleman Extreme 62 quart) and it's big enough (the cooler) that I can put all my supplies in there and strap my pot to the top with the built in strap holes they have. Just wheel it in and I'm set up.

Well, it was a good thought and I'm glad I got some info on what I would need to come up with.

Well, I stayed home this morning and brewed, for the first time in years. I joined up here as part of my "get butt back in gear to brew" program, and it seems to have worked. When UPS shows up Monday I'm sort-of committed to making it keep working for a while ;-)

Being rusty and not fully organized it took 4-1/4 hours to crank out a steep/extract brew. I need to get a better handle on what my evaporation rate actually is and perhaps scale back my starting volume a touch to speed things up - being more organized would also help, I'm sure, though I've never been especially fast at brewing, nor do I really need to be, though it would be nice.

I'm going to try PM and then see if I can manage AG - if it's too much agony, I'll just keep on with extract and whatever, but I hope to make it work out, even if I end up cutting batch size a bit to make it more manageable.