Hello, I am a complete noob in the process of putting together a 1 BBL electric system. Could anyone willing to tolerate some really basic questions mind posting here so I can PM you, or PMing me? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
i say post them in this thread so other newbs like me can benefit from the info too!
Hello, I am a complete noob in the process of putting together a 1 BBL electric system. Could anyone willing to tolerate some really basic questions mind posting here so I can PM you, or PMing me? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
How are you going to control temperature with an HLT with HERMS coil if all you have is an on/off switch for the HLT heating element? You'd need to manually monitor the HLT temp somehow and sit there and flick the switch off/on as required (this is what a PID does for you automatically by using a temp probe in the HLT). I think that would be very annoying to do for hours on end.
If you know a bit about electronics you can solder together a board to build a pulse-width-modulator for the boil kettle and it'll probably cost you $20 instead of the $40 you'd spend on a PID to do the same. It's not a huge savings.
Be aware that most of the money in a control panel is for the high current switching devices, locking connectors, and enclosure. You could hardwire to save money but then that brings about all sorts of other issues including electrical inspection, and so on.
Many have looked at ways to simplify my control panel by removing items. All of the alarm switches and the volt/amp meters can be removed but that's only about a $50 savings. There isn't (IMHO) much you can cut out without cutting into the usability/functionality/safety. Of course, at the end of the day you can build your panel any way you want to meet your specific needs. Just make sure to figure out your entire brewing process from start to end and build a panel around the process, not the other way around.
Good luck!
Kal
No worries about that at all. Everyone has different budgets. I just wanted to make sure that what you're doing was feasible.Thanks. I didn't mean to slag off your work, it's awesome, but I just am on a really tight budget.
I'm not sure what you mean exactly. Do you mean use one heating element in the BK and a regular gas burner for the HLT?What if I only used one coil for my BK and used a burner to control the temp?
It's not about just turning it off when it reaches temp. You talked about a coil in the HLT so I assumed you meant a HERMS coil which would be used to maintain mash temp. The way this is done is that that the HLT element fires intermittently during your mashing to keep the mash at temp.I can deal with sitting around waiting for my HLT to reach the right temp and turning off a switch.
I'm not sure what you mean exactly. Do you mean use one heating element in the BK and a regular gas burner for the HLT?
As soon as you turn off the HLT heat it will start to lose heat. You need to periodically fire the HLT element to maintain temp.
If I was you I'd simply do all gas. Doesn't sound like you're going to be getting much (if any) of the advantages of electric other than possibly a bit of a cost savings on consumption (electricity in most places is cheaper than gas).
What are you reasons for wanting to go electric?
Kal
You can brew indoors with gas as long as you exhaust adequately and have a makeup air system to supply air. Given the size of propane burners required for a 1 bbl setup, you'd be looking at an extremely large hood fan to do this correctly with a properly sized make-up system.
Think of an average gas stove at home. The burners only put out a tiny fraction of what a huge brewing burner can do and at home people often have 300-600 CFM range hoods. Mine at home is 900 CFM because of our oversized range and required us to install a make-up air system ($3500) because of building code.
So you'd likely something like what you'd see in a restaurant kitchen like this:
These usually run in the $5-15K range plus installation, etc.
Kal
Doable, yes. Anything is doable. I have no idea on cost. It depends on how it's implemented. You're asking a very open ended question and expecting an exact number. I'm not sure anyone can provide that for you.
Kal
Is there a durability issue with using 55gal SS drums?
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