Help Calm My Fears of Electric Brewing

Okay, so I'm really thinking about ditching my Sabco system and going to electric brewing. My thought is to buy a prebuilt 30a system from theelectricbrewery.com. One of my fears is that I'll be brewing and I hit the elements with my spoon and it breaks or something and I'll be electrocuted. I know the system will have a GFCI, but are the "guaranteed" to work 100% of the time? Yes, I worry about everything

There is probably more that can go wrong with propane burners when you think about it. C0 gas, burns, fire, etc.

Great, huh? Now I gave you something else to worry about!

Seriously, electric brewing is safe. As safe as firing up propane burners and dealing with boiling liquids, anyway.

You aren't going to break your element, any more than you're going to have your propane tank explode. I mean, both things are in the realm of possibility, but so unlikely with using a bit of sense as to make it something to not consider.

Other considerations are things like boiling liquids and flames and alcohol- not a good mix. That's why I never drink and brew. I have one beer, during chilling, and that's it. But that's not because I brew all-electric, it's just because I don't think brewing when drinking is a good idea!

I'm with Yooper on this one. Electric brewing is very safe. As long as it's put together with safety in mind. I can assume that buying a prebuilt system is going to mean it's set up with all the proper connections and requirements in place. I mean, I'm sure there are people who put together their own rigs who do things that are other than recommended.

It's cheap, quiet, handy, and awesome. It has it's own set of considerations, but I like it better, in general, than gas. And my system is still being built!

I made the move to electric this Fall and my only regret is not having done it sooner.

im in the process of building mine and also worried initially until really researching it and understanding exactly what is happening in the system. Spend the extra money to have a professional wire up the outlet and gfci protection for you if your uncomfortable with working in the main panel. I was back and forth on using a spa panel and ultimately decided to go with the GFCI breaker. It was only slightly more expensive (+$30) and since I had to add a new run for the outlet I went for it over the spa panel. I will test the GFCI before every brew for peace of mind, and kill the breaker when it is not in use.

Thanks every one! You've made up my mind, now time to take the info to the wife

I have an all electric system and would never use anything else. Do you plan to get rid of the sabco altogether? If it were me I'd turn it into an electric RIMs system. That would be very easy to do.

I have a RIMS wizard and I'd like to try and use that, without the propane, but I don't think it will hold temp. Then use the electric brewery panel for my boil and HLT. I don't think I want a HERMS if possible.

Heck, you're almost all electric anyway! I don't think the RIMs wizard will do all you need. You don't need Kal's whole setup though, just some control for HLT and BK. A few places make ready built controllers or you can easily put one together with some DIY skills.

while were on the topic of safety. What would you all recommend for periodic testing of the system? I was thinking ground resistance (correct term?) would be a good test. Maybe one lead of the multimeter to the ground receptacle on the power cable and the other used to test for ground on other metal items in the brewery. Kettles, element enclosures, pumps, etc. Obviously all continuity tests are done with the system unplugged.

what other tests make sense?

NervousDad said:

Okay, so I'm really thinking about ditching my Sabco system and going to electric brewing. My thought is to buy a prebuilt 30a system from theelectricbrewery.com. One of my fears is that I'll be brewing and I hit the elements with my spoon and it breaks or something and I'll be electrocuted. I know the system will have a GFCI, but are the "guaranteed" to work 100% of the time? Yes, I worry about everything

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If you've ever tossed a metal pot or pan onto an electric stove, you've probably been closer to doing damage to an element. Those stovetop elements are the same thing as what is in an ekeggle.

passedpawn said:

If you've ever tossed a metal pot or pan onto an electric stove, you've probably been closer to doing damage to an element. Those stovetop elements are the same thing as what is in an ekeggle.

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I was actually thinking of the same thing, which is scary because as a child I put a pot of water on the stove to make oddles-of-noodles. I apparently broke the element as I sat in my living room I watched a shower of spark shoot out of my kitchen, my response was to run out of the house luckily I didn't burn the house down but it put a huge hole in the pot.

NervousDad said:

I was actually thinking of the same thing, which is scary because as a child I put a pot of water on the stove to make oddles-of-noodles. I apparently broke the element as I sat in my living room I watched a shower of spark shoot out of my kitchen, my response was to run out of the house luckily I didn't burn the house down but it put a huge hole in the pot.

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I can understand why you're a NervousDad

I'm sitting here looking at my RIMS wizard. It has a unitironics v350 PLC installed. Would it be possible to just change the relays to support a higher voltage and larger element to run my RIMS without the propane?

NervousDad said:

I'm sitting here looking at my RIMS wizard. It has a unitironics v350 PLC installed. Would it be possible to just change the relays to support a higher voltage and larger element to run my RIMS without the propane?

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The specs i found for the RIMs Wizard has a PID on it not the touchscreen controller. Is your RIMs integrated into the brewmagic?

There was an upgrade option to the v350 so it's exactly like the brewmagic. It's basically, just a button to turn on pump and a button for heat. I'm looking that the software to write the code for the controller and maybe I can just use this as my control panel.