The perfect HLT

Recently I waited for my water to heat and got to thinking I could create a better HLT.

I would like my water to be at temperature just before brew time. I get up early to make beer to avoid the heat of the day. I was thinking of a natural gas water heater (HLT) that would maintain 175F to 180F. The problem is that none of the water heaters I have seen would be able to be set that high (safety?). This hot water would be great for cleaning my kegs too. I want to wash and rinse in the inverted position. If any of you have knowledge of doing this I would really be interested.

Sorry I don't have any MLT advice, but my water heater puts out such hot water (140 degrees) it's almost at mash temp right out of the tap. I know a lot of people just use cold water then heat it up but I use the hot water out of the tap instead.

What about some kind of PID? Isn't there a PID thread around here somewhere?

An "on demand" water heater could be an option. But you might run into the same temperature limitations.

You'd just have to tweak the thermostat a little. None of them will generate that kind of temperature with the stock thermostat.

Yuri_Rage said:

You'd just have to tweak the thermostat a little. None of them will generate that kind of temperature with the stock thermostat.

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I think that there are commercial models that can do this and I have been trying to contact MFG's about this type of water heater. It would really be nice to have hot water for brewing that is always at 180 F because you could start brewing right away, always have sparge water not to mention cleaning kegs and CIP conical fermenters. I will let you know what I find.

That would be pretty flippin' sweet but I gotta say.......my water heater puts out water in the 140-5* range and only takes maybe 3min to heat up to mash temps...only a couple more for sparge temps. And for cleaning....145* water is till pretty dang hot....

BUT, if you find it do it

Here's a thought... commercial (e.g., restaurant) heat sanitizing dishwashers have a "boost" heater in them to heat water that maintains a minimum of 180dF. Get ahold of one of these "boosters", do a little DIY work, and you've got your hot water!

Just make a heatstick, connect it to a temperature controller, and drop it in the HLT you already have. You could make a cage around it to prevent it from hitting the plastic (if its a cooler) but that's all you'd need.

The most important thing is that they must always be submerged when they are plugged in so you would have to keep that in mind. I have one that I use in almost every aspect of my brewing (I'm still extract +PM though) and I LOVE it.

http://www.cedarcreeknetworks.com/heatstick.htm

There is also a few threads on a DIY instant water supply for both gas/propane and electric.

I'm looking at electric for when my service is upgraded to 200amp because I feel it is a more compact and controllable system. I don't really want to get into flow control if I don't have to. I think I can get by with manual trial and error on the flow and then just modulating the element via PID love controller to get the output temp I need. IIRC, the consensus was that a 4500watt element could probably do 1 quart per minute at 100ºF rise (170F sparge temp from 70F tap input). I find this kind of system more desirable than holding a bunch of water at temp for any length of time. This would also allow me to use city water pressure to fly sparge on a single pump, single tier system. Seems like butta to me.

Sounds great Bobby and all the rest of you who commented on the electric elements. The elements sound great for brewing and heating a sump for washing kegs but I still want to make cleaning the kegs and conical with water that is under pressure (hot water heater) and very hot so to sanitize (I will use Starsan to finish the process). I want to use a pump with a heated sump and spray ball to clean the kegs (inverted with Cascade) as it is the easy cleaning solution. The 27 gallon conical can be (CIP) hand scrubed and then rinsed with hot water. This has to be way easier than having to carry around hot water in buckets and pouring it in the vessels to be cleaned.

can you use a march pump already on your system (or good excuse to get one) and do that with an HLT that has an electric element and PID?

I was thinking of adding an element to a keggle when it is converted to an HLT. Then I can run burner (propane) and electric element to get up to temps fast, and use the PID and element to hold temperature. My only catch is that I'm no electrician, so I basically need to find a 110 element that I can plug into a ranco or something similar that is stupid-easy to put together and that I can plug into the wall for brew day. I can insulate hlt to safe some energy.

How about plumbing an intact sanke keg (pressure capable) and installing an element. If you feed it with city pressure, the hot water output will be under pressure. Put an overpressure safety valve on it and you can use a controller to get it to any temperature you'd like. I'd want to install the element in the sanke's valve opening so I'd probably invert the keg. In addition, I'd weld a 2" stainless tube into the neck that extended 3/4 of the way up into the keg and extended 3" below so that I could plumb the input water into the tube so it's heating the water as it enters. I'm probably not describing it well, but I believe it's workable. Of course, you could just buy a small water heater and override the stock controller to do the same thing.

That's some creative thinking there Bobby, are you in competition with Yuri? You would also have to insulate that too. I think the water heater would be easier though. I found out that "Ruud" has water heaters that hold at 180F so I will be looking into that. I figure that unless it is price prohibitive that the Ruud water heater would be the best way to go as the safety and insulation is already there. I think that the sump for the hot cleaner would be best heated with an electric element though so it would maintain 180F. I would do all this over a period of time so I don't get sticker shock.

What do you guys think of this product, it says it's range is 80-150 but I wonder if you could mod the temp control to go up to 180. Uses propane, 1.4 gallons per minute (probably somewhat less if we could up the temp). Garden hose adapter, and comes with a shower head for you fly spargers ;o)

http://www.productsthatsave.com/ptsl5.html

I'm no engineer but I like to play one on TV. I thought I'd share my thoughts on this design just a little further if not to help you out if you decide to go this way, but maybe to jog some more imagination for other folks thinking of going electric. Here's the basic idea:



This system should allow for both on demand use for when you only need a small amount of warm water or up to 15 gallons of HOT water for use at one time.

I guess all the parts in the drawing are labeled well enough to understand, but let me explain how I think each use would work.

If you want on demand water, you close the inlet valve, vent the pressure relief and then drain any cold water out. Close the relief and outlet valve, turn on your electric power, open the inlet valve. Once enough water flows in to build pressure, it will stop flowing until you open the output valve. If your flow is slow enough, you should get hot water out. I think of this as a method of running sparge water. Throughout this entire operation, I don't see the water level getting much above 8 gallons but you'd have to figure it out based on the city water pressure.

If you want to reserve hot water, you'd basically just open the inlet valve and vent the relief valve until you get water spitting out. Then crank up the electric and set your temp on the controller and walk away for an hour. While you're using the water you might want to set the temp 10F higher so that the element is heating the incoming water the best it can otherwise the temp will slowly drop as cold water mixes in. This effect is slowed by forcing the colder water up to the top of the tank.

The last thing to note is to make sure the inlet tube physically goes higher than the element as shown. Even if you disconnect the inlet hose, water will never drain out of the 2" tube so you won't run the element dry.

conpewter said:

What do you guys think of this product, it says it's range is 80-150 but I wonder if you could mod the temp control to go up to 180. Uses propane, 1.4 gallons per minute (probably somewhat less if we could up the temp). Garden hose adapter, and comes with a shower head for you fly spargers ;o)

http://www.productsthatsave.com/ptsl5.html

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I think it has potential if you can mod the controller.

bobby, in your drawing the incoming water is heated by the element, but when none is flowing in, you will have a hard time keeping it as hot with the tube blocking flow past the element.
You might get away with some holes in the bottom of the tube, since inrushing water would mostly go up anyway, when there was no inflow, the rising heated water could drag in water from the bottom of the keg to take it's place, creating a current.


Would the hot water heater, if it could go to 180, heat up quickly enough on brew day?

Another problem with water heaters... if I understand correctly, once you start draining them, they automatically refill as you go. This means you are diluting your hot water with cold as you use it, so you will see a temperature decline unless the volume of the unit and the power of the heater can overcome it. It'll take some testing, but maybe the volumes used in a batch of beer would be okay. Heck, even if you unpower the element after you are done sparging, you can use that residual hot water to clean up with till it's gone, then switch to normal faucet hot water (if you have hot where you brew, I do not, so I use leftover sparge water in the utility sink).

conpewter said:

What do you guys think of this product, it says it's range is 80-150 but I wonder if you could mod the temp control to go up to 180. Uses propane, 1.4 gallons per minute (probably somewhat less if we could up the temp). Garden hose adapter, and comes with a shower head for you fly spargers ;o)

http://www.productsthatsave.com/ptsl5.html

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This would run 4.5 hours on a 5 gallon propane tank so whatever BTU's in a propane tank could be calculated into cost and (water temp/flow rate). I am trying to get away from propane due to the cost when compared to natural gas but this does offer a totally portable solution for cleaning for some brewers.

Bobby's suggestion has one small flaw I beleive in that the water in the tube would get hotter and hotter until it went to steam because water is contained within the tube and can only enter from the top inside the keg. I would think that some holes would have to be in the lower part of the tube to keep this from happening when there is no flow from the water supply.

I don't know if it's a flaw but what I'm assuming is that the baffle tubing would contain the heat initially but it would eventually heat up the surrounding water and create currents in the keg itself. If you put holes towards the bottom, you're defeating the purpose of the baffle altogether.

If you take the control knob off your gas water heater you can remove the little plastc knob that stops you from turning the control past its hot set point. I have done this and been able to get strike water right fron the pipes. It is dangerously hot and will burn anyone who might unknowingly washes their hands or something, but it does work and it can always be turned back down.

I like that idea very much and think it has alot of potential. I agree that the tube full of hot water will heat the surrounding water as well as the element itself would. The only thing I'd be concerned with is when the water level outside the center tube dropped below the level outside the tube. I would think such a small amount of water with such a large element would quickly boil off the water and you'd end up with a center tube that basically kept the same level as the water outside the tube....

I'm really just thinking out loud here but other than that I really like that design. Perhaps the an improvement would be to do the element horizontal at the bottom of the tube with a 2" elbow pointing straight up to hold in the water. The outlet tube could be just above the height of the outlet valve to guarantee that at least 2-3 gallons always remain in the tank and the element is below it to prevent boiling the water that directly surrounds the element.

Brewpastor said:

If you take the control knob off your gas water heater you can remove the little plastc knob that stops you from turning the control past its hot set point. I have done this and been able to get strike water right fron the pipes. It is dangerously hot and will burn anyone who might unknowingly washes their hands or something, but it does work and it can always be turned back down.

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X2

My hot water is @ 170. I mentioned to the plumber who installed it I wanted HOT water and he removed a part inside the dial. It can go hotter, but I'm scared of scalding someone. Perhaps for an ice cold beverage a local plumber would tell you the skinny...

Since I batch sparge, does anyone know a way I could continue to do so with this conversion (having no HLT). The mash in is easy since I would know how much water was in the cooler before I poured in the grains. For the first and second sparge though I would no no idea how much water I was pouring in from a hyped up water heater. Would there be water meters that can measure fairly accurately (tenths of a gallon?) and withstand 180*?

Bobby_M said:

I don't know if it's a flaw but what I'm assuming is that the baffle tubing would contain the heat initially but it would eventually heat up the surrounding water and create currents in the keg itself. If you put holes towards the bottom, you're defeating the purpose of the baffle altogether.

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Ok Bobby, that was too harsh to call it a flaw but what I was thinking was that if the holes were sized right in the bottom of the tube it would cause a convection current within the tube to cause hot water to rise in the tube drawing other water in the bottom of the tube and cause mixing of the water any time that the element was energized. Very hot water would come out the top of the tube. Obvisouly the inlet volume could only equal the outlet volume as it is a closed container. Look at how a regular water heater only lets cold water in the bottom but it enters from the top which pre heats it somewhat as it travels through the hot water in the tank.
This would also be a good way for the cold water to be protected from siphoning the hot water from the tank. Notice there is an anti siphon hole at the top of the cold water tube in the standard water heater.
The anode rod stops corrosion from galvanic action.

I agree with the concept only it would eliminate the ability to run it as an on-demand system but if that's not needed it's not a big deal. I'd then move the output valve to a height that would always leave the level above the element.

A unit like this might be a decent alternative.. 8 gallons in one shot, wait an hour for 6 more. Sounds like enough for 10 gallon batches.
http://www.plumbingsupply.com/ariston.html

I like all the intensely creative thinking in this thread. I think having 180 degree tap water would be great for brewing. But man, I would NOT want to clean anything with 180 degree water- it'd burn you really fast!

Maybe if we're talking about an all hard-plumbed system for everything including the cleaning process, but I for one would not want to be splashing around 180 degree water out of a hose or something.

So unless I'm misunderstanding something here, I'm kind of thinking that 150 degree water with a 3 minute propane boil time to 180 is going to be far more cost effective than rigging up a water heater or something. I mean, If I was intent on cleaning with 180 degree water, I'd probably just spend the 3 minutes to heat the water up to that temperature before cleaning.

But I know that is an awfully simple (boring) solution.

Bobby,
Do you know of any way you could have a longer tube, and stick the element in it, and have the holes at the bottom, but you could twist it and drop it down 2 inches to block the holes in a sleeve of some sort? Or make a fitting such that you can turn it 90 degrees and block the holes with a sleeve that has matching holes at the right angle? Then you could run it as a hot water heater, or as an on-demand setup with the twist of a fitting.

I'm thinking the tube would have to be either welded in to the sanke spear assembly (which could be removed) or directly to the sanke neck. It would take some keen engineering to make it moveable with captured silicone Orings... way too much thinking for me.