Why Not Just Plug Into the Dryer Outlet?

As so many before, I'd really like to get away from using gas and go electric for my 6 gallon boils. Have visited all the usual sites and read numerous posts which all seem to indicate this is a fairly involved process. All I want to do is stick an element into my brew kettle and plug it in when ready to boil. Why can't I mount an element into my kettle, use a NEMA enclosure and run a power cord right to my clothes dryer outlet directly. Guess I just don't understand why all the additional gear, like fancy controllers, etc. my pump is a 110v and would plug separately into a normal 110 outlet. Guidance is appreciated.

I use a 30 amp gfci protected cord because I don't like being electrocuted, but other than that, I do just what you are talking about. Here's a pic of my pot to illustrate.

Oops, that's actually a pic of my friends rig, but mine looks almost exactly like it from that angle.

Electric brewing cut my brewday energy costs from about 20 bucks in propane to about 75 cents in electricity.

how far off the bottom is your element?

The reason you see people going with controllers is that you dont neccessarily want the element firing at 100% power all the time (which is what you would get with it being plugged into the wall).

The principal is that you regulate the power going to the element on a per time basis. So, if you want to power the element at 50%, over a 5 second interval, then, the controller would apply power for 2.5 seconds, and then off for 2.5 seconds. This is an excellent way to maintain temperatures for mashing (herms) or in the boil kettle.

If you are only concerned with boiling, then you could size an element that would be suitable for your vessel. But, the probably with that would be you would take quite a bit longer to get up to boil, as you would be apply less power (say 2000 watt vs 5500watt). Again, you could do something like mounting 2 elements, and then turn one off once boil comes, but that just seems like complicating things for no purpose. I like automation, and I like to set it forget it so to say.
Hope this helps

I've wondered about the time it takes to brew with these also.

If you're doing a boil of 7 gallons or there abouts from mash temperature, How long does it take to get a boil going?

There are a number of threads on HBT that reference a spreadsheet that will give you time to achieve whatever temperature you want given some parameters you plug in. I don't have the link on me but it should pop up with a search.

BadNewsBrewery said:

There are a number of threads on HBT that reference a spreadsheet that will give you time to achieve whatever temperature you want given some parameters you plug in. I don't have the link on me but it should pop up with a search.

Click to expand...

Thanks.
I have been looking at the forum from my phone lately and the searches aren't very good.
I will check it out sometime though.
I'm not thinking of making the jump to electric, just curious.

You don't need no fancy smanchy controllers!

Get to High Gravity and buy dis stuff:
http://www.highgravitybrew.com/ProductCart/pc/Electric-Kettle-Controller-158p3084.htm
And dis:
http://www.highgravitybrew.com/ProductCart/pc/Heating-Element-4500-Watt-SS-306p2514.htm

And get brewing!

corvanic said:

how far off the bottom is your element?

Click to expand...

That's a 30 gallon pot and the element is right around the 5 gallon mark so its a couple inches more or less from the bottom.

As for how long it takes to brew. Here are my times:

From 70 deg to mash (170 deg) it takes 40 minutes for 20 gallons
From 150 to boil it takes about 20 minutes to hit a full boil

To boil for an hour and to heat strike water the cost for electric is less than a dollar for a 25 gallon batch. Considering that I was shelling out almost 20 bucks for propane, it is worth the trouble to go electric. Like jma99 said, "you don't need no stinkin controller, just get to brewin!"