Electric Kettle Instructions

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tdiowa

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Location
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I have been trolling these boards for several years now and have begged, borrowed and stolen ideas from my fellow brewers in search of brewing a better beer. Now I would like to share a concept that I have been using to brew my beer.

Several years ago I came upon a BruHeat bucket and started to use it and fell in love with it. I then decided to try and build a better one and ultimately succeeded.

My biggest hang up was controling the water heater element. I did some research and came upon a controller called a simmerstat. Further research convinced me that this would work and I set about building my electric kettle.

I am currently on my third generation of my electric kettle. All have worked flawlessly and I have brewed more then 100 5 gallon batches using my electric kettle.

So after reading these boards and seeing all the different ideas on building a electric kettle I decided to share mine with my fellow brewers. I have written up very detailed instructions on building one. These include pictures, written instructions, parts list, and diagrams. I have compiled it into PDF format and I am know comfortable releasing it. I would like to post it on this forum but I do not think I can.

So if anyone is interested in receiving these instruction leave me a PM with your email and I will send it out to you.

TD
 
So if anyone is interested in receiving these instruction leave me a PM with your email and I will send it out to you.

TD

Give it a try to post it here. If not PM me and I can at least put it on one of my sites and link to it.
 
Attached is the PDF sent to me in email, with permission from the original poster.

Try this at your own risk, electricity can be deadly. Though these are great instructions you should have a fair bit of knowledge and respect for electricity before trying this.

The forum won't allow PDF over 15K, or zip over 95K, so you'll need to change the extension on this file to .pdf instead of eps

Because of that I've also hosted it here

View attachment The Electric Kettle CHANGE MY EXTENSION TO pdf.eps
 
Excellent work! This is probably a great primer for anyone wanting to build an electric stand.
 
I like it alot and being an electrician I think I can set this up in my basement with some cool tweaks. My ideas are rolling. Thanks for the the idea and leg work.
 
I like your work, nice job. Very professional looking finished product. Perhaps this is the push I need to stop w/ the heatsticks already. Thanks!
 
I've been looking into the idea of going electric. Do you have a rough idea of the cost of the parts needed for this project?

I would say from start to finish $250.00 would cover it. On the Parts list I tried to itemize it as best that I could. You will notice that some of my materials were bought at Ace Hardware. You could save a considerable amount if you bought at the big box stores like Menards, Lowes and Home Depot.

TD
 
Very nice. This will be a great reference in the future. I've been wanting to do this so I can brew inside out of the cold and not worry about ventilation. have you had any problem with scorching on the element?
 
Looks nice... I would only point out a couple things

#1 A 30qt pot will be pretty small for doing full boils on a 5 gallon batch, especially with electrical components attached to the side of the kettle (read boil over) (7-7.5 gallons for a 5 gallon batch)

#2 A 3000W element will take about 25 minutes to get from 150F (typical runoff temp after it drains to the kettle) to a boil (maybe not a big deal)

#3 My 5500W element in my BK has to run at no less than 65% to keep a decent vigorous boil going (ambient temp 60F, no wind) that ammounts to 3,575 watts of power. 3000W is 55% and I cannot really keep any sort of boil going with that percent power, and far from vigorous? Again, 7-7.5 gallons for a 5 gallon batch.


It looks awesome and clean, but there are certain advantages if you are already running 240VAC to using a PID and SSR ($85 for the combo) to that you can switch a larger element. If you ever do choose to do more than 5 gallon batches youd definately have to upgrade to something higher wattage and in turn something that can switch more amps. It would really stink to be out in the garage in on a cold day and not be able to get a sufficient boil going.

That being said, this would be perfect for partial boils.

Good PDF
 
#1 A 30qt pot will be pretty small for doing full boils on a 5 gallon batch, especially with electrical components attached to the side of the kettle (read boil over) (7-7.5 gallons for a 5 gallon batch)

I am currently on my third generation of my Electric Kettle which uses a 40qt pot. The one that I have written up in my plans is for the 30 qt. I am a mini mash brewer so I use the 40 qt to bring my water to strike temperature and the 30 qt to boil my wort.

I quess you are right about the boil over but I have found that when I do have a boilover it is becaue of lack of attention to detail and it probably would not have mattered what size of pot I had.

TD
 
Tried to open the PDF but had no luck with the EPS extension. would you be abe to send it out with out the EPS extension?
 
Just wanted to update everyone who was interested in my electric kettle. I purchased a 10 gallon conical from Tank Depot several months a go. I plan on using it for 7.5 gallon batches. The pot that I was using was a 40 qt pot and I just was not comfortable boiling that much wort in this pot. I bought a 50 qt pot from Instaware.com for $55.00 and then converted it to a electric kettle using the plans that I had developed. I then filled it with 10 gallons of tap water and was able to bring it to a boil in 45 minutes.

To say the least I am very happy with my new electric kettle. I will get back to you on my modifications of the 10 gallon conical.

TD
 
Awesome post! A few questions:

1.) could you have used a dryer cord, larger GFCI breaker and bigger element? or were you limited by the Simmerstat current handling ability?

2.) Would an old stove burner controller work for this? I do not leave my brewpot unattended so I could adjust the knob as required.

3.) In the schematic for the simmerstat connections the outlet connections are labeled ground, hot and neutral. In a 3-prong 220VAC configuration, they are actually ground, 110 hot and 110 hot right?
 
1.) could you have used a dryer cord, larger GFCI breaker and bigger element? or were you limited by the Simmerstat current handling ability?

The Simmerstat is rated at 15 Amps. With my limited amount of electrical background I would say you couldn't go any higher then what I have listed.

2.) Would an old stove burner controller work for this? I do not leave my brewpot unattended so I could adjust the knob as required.

I don't have any knowledge if this would work or not. The Simmerstat is so easy to hook up and use that I don't know if you would want to hassle with an unknown quantity. That being said when I started this build I had a lot of unknowns. I didn't know if what I was trying would work. In the end it did. My suggestion to you is give it a try. Try hooking everything up using a 110 volt to test it. If it work then flip to 220 volt.

3.) In the schematic for the simmerstat connections the outlet connections are labeled ground, hot and neutral. In a 3-prong 220VAC configuration, they are actually ground, 110 hot and 110 hot right?

I believe you are correct. Again I know enough about electricity to get me killed.

Good luck with your build. I just completed my 5th Kettle for a friend I got interested in Brewing. I used the 30 qt pot and tried it out Saturday. It brought 5 gallons of water to a boil in 40 minutes.

TD
 
Just thought I would bump this to the head of the list because of all the interest in building a Electric Kettle.

TD
 
I have a 30lt electric kettle with a 1800 Watt element (not of an immersion type as it is built in under the kettle). Since the price that the manufacturer is giving me for substituting the 1800 with a 2000 Watt element (so that i will gain only 200 watts) is practically identical, do you think it will be safe to use this separate immersion element in conjunction with the original element in order to have 1800+2000= 3800watts?? Thanks a lot.
Here is the link
http://cgi.ebay.de/PROSPER-SICHERHE...eräte_KleingeräteKüche_PM?hash=item2303dcb23a
 
This is quite intriguing.

Are there any issues with the heating element coming in direct contact with the wort?
Scorching? Excess carmelization?
 
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