Indoor Mashing: Do I need a hood?

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ahave

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So these cold months have me questioning how much I really want to brew; which defeats the purpose of having so much brew equipment. So, my idea was to obtain just a few more pieces to the brewery and move indoors - at least partially.

I do not own the house (rent) and the house does not have 220V lines (old fuse box), but it does have a basement. This leaves me with the option that I could find 2 20amp lines and run two 1500 Watt elements into my HLT for strike & sparging. I do not want to boil in the basement as I know the moisture released from that process would certainly require some sort of vent hood and I don't really want to invest that much hardware in a rental, plus there are some technical concerns.

The question I have is: how much moisture should I expect to release during the mash / HLT? I will keep the HLT and mash tun lids on (minus me taking the lid off to check flow rates and to stir, etc).

Any help from experience indoor electric brewers would be helpful, thanks!
 
I live in the same climate and mashing was no problem a few days ago. However once the bk started boiling about 30 minutes in there was moisture everywhere. I opened the garage door and everything was fine.
 
Last night was my first indoor boil. The steam from the boil was overwhelming. I had an old bath fan running and it couldn't keep up. You really need a vent hood.
 
Mashing won't be an issue at all. Only boiling.

yeppers, this is what I have found to be true as well. I even did a double brew day this week and had zero condensation on my windows. Conversely, when my wife makes spaghetti there is noticeable condensation on three windows in/near the kitchen. Our house is pretty tight, to. It has to be, it's -45 outside as I type this. Mash away!

Happy Brewing!
 
I moved into the basement last year. When I brewed in the garage the humidity was too much. I don't have a hood but this setup does a great job of keeping the humidity under control. Basically, it's a 12" deskfan mounted to one of the beams with a styrofoam box built around it. The picture is a bit distorted as those hoses pass under the styrofoam. Why they appear the way they do is interesting!

6203-basement.jpg
 
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