Steppping stone between BIAB and a 5500 watt eBIAB setup

After a BIAB session (and many homebrews) this weekend I have finally decided to dive into electric brewing. The main limiting factor is living in an apartment and the power that is available. Therefore, an interim step between where I am now and what I want with a 240v 30A is needed.

The one goal that I want to keep intact is a system that can easily be upgrading to the ever so popular 5500 watt element with a bottom draining keggle. For the time being, I will be using a 1500 watt element inside my current keggle to maintain mash temperatures during my recirculating biab mash step. This brings up my first question, is this element powerful enough to maintain ~8 gallons @ 170* F?

I forgot to mention that I will still be using my burner for my boil. But I would like to use the element for all things mash related if possible (I might use the burner to get close to strike temps).

If this type of “hybrid” has been done over and over, my apologies. I have poured over threads and diagrams without finding a situation like this. If not, I will add pics of my setup and turn this into a build thread. I’m still working on the circuit drawings, but most of the Auber parts are in transit. Thanks for any insight!

So i was thinking, would two 1500 Watt heating elements be enough to boil ~7 gallons? I could easily use two 15 A circuits and go completely electric. I've only seen two 2000 watt elements discussed previously.

I would suspect the 3000 watts would be enough to boil 7 gallons. I know I've read some people have luck with 2000 watts being able to boil 7 gallons. I'm guessing there are some other factors involved like kettle dimensions. Personally I've tried using one 2000 watt element and it was not enough so I added another 2000 watt element. It works great.

Be careful when using the burner and a kettle mounted element. The heat from your burner will put some extra stress on the wiring and element.

Yeah, after thinking about it some more, I am going to do the dual 1500 Watt elements.

If its only temporary, you could make one of the boil elements a heatstick so you don't need two holes punched in your kettle. Also, if you build your control panel for 240, you might be able to come up with a diagram that switches between 120/240. On the schematic I have I could almost swap the 240 hot 2 for a 120 neutral and the panel would be good for 120. It would be a good stop gap until you get 240 available

Do you have a electric stove? That's plenty of power to run your boil kettle.

Thanks for the ideas. Here is a pic of all of the components that I will be using. Still trying to work it all into a correct circuit. Vut this will give you a pretty good sense of what I am trying to do.



Now I just need to pour over PJ's diagrams and morph them into one that fits my needs.

should be christmas on my doorstep right now. Can't wait to get home and get everything in order.

Anyways, here is what I am thinking for the panel

if someone could take a look at my diagram so far and tell me what they think, that would be great. I still need to add in the timer, reset button and e-stop. excuse the poor drawing skills

You have 2-120V power inlet feeds but you are only using "Power 1" to drive the 2 1500W elements. Your total draw on "Power-1" is over 25 amps.

I think you need to switch the power input on SSR #1 (pin 1) to power input fed from the "Power-2" line. As it stands now "Power-2" is only being used to energize contactor 2.

thank you very much for pointing that out. totally did that wrong.

Finally, some picture proof that I am progressing.

At first I was going to build my panel from scratch with a clear front panel. Had It all mounted like this:



But I woke up in the morning with several stress cracks around some of the switches that I had probably tightened too much. So that led me to a 14"x10" box as seen below:



I'm pretty happy with it, especially since a co worker gave it to me as it had two holes cut incorrectly in it. I just placed the PID and timer strategically toe cover them.

Here is a shot of the wiring I have done so far. Really pushing to brew on it this weekend since the SWMBO is out of town and I can have some personal time with the new rig.



My question is, is it ok to connect all of the hot's together like this for the input side of a switch? Or should I run more than one back to the hot bus?



Also, for those thinking about doing any electric build, make sure you have a pair of these:



Lastly,, I decided to use all twist lock connections at the box side of things. here are the power cords.

Running the hot together is fine and way easier

Yeah, I figured as long as the load can be handled by the 14 gauge wire, it will be fine. It is only powering a couple of lights, the pump and the PID directly, so it will be good.

Alright fine people of these forums, I could really use some tips on troubleshooting my system. I know this will be hard without pics, but for the time being I am at work.

Therefore I'll list some of the issues I'm having and if you could possibly offer some insight on the first things you would check that would be great.

After plugging in the system....
- Neither the PID or timer show any signs of life
- Most of the switches turn on and off their respective lights
- One of the switches has an effect on the other lights
- One of the lights will be light with a dim pulsing even when in the off position

My plan is to start by getting the PID to turn on and move forward from there. What is the minimum requirements for that sucker to turn on? Just a hot and neutral connection?

Thanks for any advice. Hopefully I'll figure this out before the planned brew day on sunday.

Show us your exact wiring plan. Specifically how you have wired the PID and Timer.

Something is wrong.

I will sketch it out when I get home. I wired it according to the pic on page one, but with the change we discussed. Obviously that doesn't have the timer in it, but that is the least of my worries right now. I'm sure I wired it wrong (at least i hope so).

I would suggest working systematically through your circuit, disconnecting the SSRs and contactors so that the only thing being fed is the controller. Once you verify that you are getting power to this, you can start adding back different circuit legs until you identify where the problems exist. Of course, as you are working with 120V power from two separate circuits, care is needed. Do you have a multimeter?

Well what do you know, the problems I stated above were fixed within 30 minutes of troubleshooting. To sum it up, I incorrectly had the neutral connecting the bus to the components. Also, i put the second heater element switch onto the same line as the heater element itself.

Overall I am very pleased with the result. It took myself exactly 3 weeks from beginning to end even with being out of town two of those weekends.

First brew session went fairly well. Even at 100% I wasn't quite getting as vigorous of a boil as I wanted/expected. Therefore I am now looking into insulating my keggle with some of this .

Some pics from yesterdays brew.





a mounted it using some old 80/20 stuff lying around





up next is some ventilation. Thinking about using a 10"to 8" and then 8" to 6" reducers followed by a fan and some elbows.

So on Sunday I was brewing a batch of beer on my new electric rig and it donned on me that I could easily do sous vide with it(Since then, i've read the extensive discussions about it here) So last night was my first attempt at some steak.



salt, pepper and 75 minutes at 126 later...



Meat, (sweet) potatoes and a homebrew. For me, it doesn't get much better than that.

So I am upgrading from 1500W elements to 1650W elements in hope to improve my boil without insulating the keggle. What are the best ways to go about bending the elements? How fragile are they? I plan on putting them in a vise grip (nut side) and gently bending them with my hand.

I just recently installed two 1700 watt elements. I bent them with my hands by gently rolling them back and forth over a large soup can. Worked like a charm!

Awesome idea. Sounds like a much safer, less brute force method.

They bent surprisingly easily. I was pretty apprehensive about doing it and picked a large diameter can but it was so easy I think I worried needlessly.

why do the elements need bending?

-=Jason=-

I have the elements right now at 180 degrees from each other. The new elements are of a lower density and much longer, therefore they would interfere with each other. As seen in the pic below.

oh you don't want them sword fighting each other. I got cha

-=Jason=-