Anyone brew with electricity?

I've heard of people using some sort of electric heater that gets immersed in the wort to boil it, and heat water. Anyone know more about those? Where to find them? How efficient they are in comparison to propane?

There's been some discussions about it over the last couple weeks...search for "Heatstick" and you'll even find the link to the plans to build your own...

I have an electric HERMS, look in my gallery and my topics posted. I boil with gas, just to avoid carmelizing sugars.

An immersed electric heating element is extremely "efficient". That is all the electric energy is transmitted to the liquid, unlike an electric stove, so 2kW really is 2kW,....

walther

I used the plans here: How to Build an Electric Homebrewing Heatstick Audio Tutorial Podcast and Step by Step Photo Instructions but there are a few dozen other option linked around the forum.

No complaints. It lets me do all-grain indoors which wouldn't be possible otherwise.

Do you use two wands as that does? Just one? Sorry, I am planning on doing this and am thinking best/most efficient way to. Thanks!

MoRoToRiUm said:

Do you use two wands as that does? Just one? Sorry, I am planning on doing this and am thinking best/most efficient way to. Thanks!

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Any objection to using a water heater element?

MoRoToRiUm

Two sticks is ideal to save time while heating but one will do if you are patient. NEVER plug a stick in dry. I accidentally popped one of my two yesterday while brewing. One 2000 W stick boiled 9 gal. Wrap a towel or blanket around the kettle to reduce heat loss. OH, i had to cover the kettle to reach boil and then needed to partially cover to maintain boil. DMS ? hope not?

I'm going to have to come back to this. How much are we looking at to build one of those?

Parker36 said:

I'm going to have to come back to this. How much are we looking at to build one of those?

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I am guessing on most of it, but I would say about $20. The elements are about $7 online, but I don't know what the shipping would be.

You can get everything at a Lowe's or Home Depot.

As the linkage says, and anyone who has used these before, they get red hot and burn out in air. Only submerse them in water when on! I'm just trying to save $ from my old electric range... Since I am still ticking to extract brewing,I am thinking one will be enough fot 1.5-2 gallons of water... I'm just afraid of being screwed on brew day(always resort back to my electric range, but have always gotten good advice from here).

The Pol: I am using a water heater element in the heatstick. I think it's almost identical to the one you use in your system (which I would like to copy as soon as I can ).

I use the heatstick plus stove top burner to get to temp quickly and then back off almost entirely on the burner. Just enough to keep a hard boil. I haven't had any issues with caramelization but I do try to keep the wort moving.

Cost: There are 0 cheap hardware stores near where I live. My cost ran to $30+. You can buy water-bucket heaters (basically the same tool) from feed stores for cheaper than that if you live in the right neighborhood.

Those bucket heaters are only 1000w and really do not assist much. I think you would need at least two in order to ASSIST your stovetop to make it reasonable. At a cost of $35 per, I think there are better solutions (permanent mount element, or heatsticks).

But, if you are not a DIY person, two bucket heaters would work.

I'm in the process of building a system that will brew exclusively with heatsticks. The prototype I've built from this website works very well, and I'm in the process of constructing two more.

One issue, however, is sufficient power in the circuit that you're using. Since I'm doing my brewing in the basement pretty close to the breaker box, I hard-wired in a power distribution board to a dedicated 60 amp 240V circuit. You can see it below with the prototype heat stick plugged into it:



Here I'm running a trial on heating strike water directly in the mash tun. One 1500W heatstick took 17 qts. of ice cold Michigan tap water to 170F in just under an hour. Two such heat sticks will decrease the time and since I'm brewing indoors next to the laundry tub, I have a plentiful supply of hot tap water so by using it, I can decrease the heating of the strike water even further. A few more shots of the trial run:



I'll probably use a Coleman Extreme for the HLT, which I already own. Just need to convert the drain plug to a ball valve fitting.



I kinda' overdid it with the RTV sealant at the element fitting; the next two will be cleaner-looking.

As well, the January/February issue of Zymurgy (Vol. 31, No. 1) has a great piece of brewing with heatsticks. The author seems to use them exclusively with great results, and he make a quantitative case that the cost savings on brewing with heatsticks is significant.

I found Jamil's comments about excess Melaoidin from these sytems in another thread to be interesting, and I echo the comments in that thread about practical experience with direct elements heating of wort and this off flavor. Is it from experience or theory? Even so, I'm not that much of a beer geek (and likely never will be) to be able to discern this flavor.

I'll take some of my electric brews to the brewmaster at my "home away from home" when I get the system up and running to see what his opinion is, and I'll post my final system in a separate thread once it's completed.

Can you make these the 15amp three prong adapter?

Parker36 said:

Can you make these the 15amp three prong adapter?

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You could, if you enjoy shocking experiences.

We're dealing with a more than a few amps submerged in water. Grounded, GFCI outlets are absolute. Period. The end.

You really only need two GFI outlets in that box (I assume since you run 240 to it that you have two 110 circuits in that box) You could also get a GFCI breaker to do the same thing for the whole circuit.

If you do have two circuits in there (one on each hot leg) and they are going to neutral you are going to overload the neutral leg when you have it all running at once. It would be better to actually run some elements meant for 240 and get the proper plugs for them.

Would it be a good idea to use a heat stick for the HLT for the sparge, instead of pouring water from a brew pot heated on the stove/burner into to the HLT?

Groves said:

Would it be a good idea to use a heat stick for the HLT for the sparge, instead of pouring water from a brew pot heated on the stove/burner into to the HLT?

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I say yes... becuase who wants to be carrying around pots of scalding hot water? And if you have a gravity system, are you climbing a ladder, or lifting it over your head?

I say go electric and heat in the HLT. But, that is how I roll now.

Pol

The Pol - I haven't had a major problem with caramelization.

True, I brew all brown ales, but I don't have any "burned sugar" taste in the brews. My latest *really* light ale batch will tell...

But I brew in the kitchen so propane isn't an option for me. Even if it were, electricity is free for us GIs living on-base. :rockin: So you can see why I went all electric, even if the possibility of caramelization exists.

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edit - urgh, I *really* need to quit reading two brewing boards at the same time while consuming the efforts of my own brewing!!!

I am not worried about carmelizing NOW... I have an ULWD element, so I should be SAFE. I rencently converted my HERMS to all electric with a 5500W RIPP element. It provides PLENTY of power for 7.5 gallon boils, even at 60% output.

Yes I have for a long time. The first brew system was given to me as they moved back east it was a big ugly propane fired unit I converted to NG then sold it after two years. Hated it from day one even after chopping and rebuilding it, still a POS unit but I had bier. Gas sucks plain and simple in my book be it NG or especially propane with the crazy price of it these days. Now for 3.5 to 3.75 gallon refills of 15# from the old 5 gallon 20# bottles. $23.99 exchange before tax no thank you besides all the crap to make it work with plumbing, pilots and burners vs clean electric heating, it's a no brainer. Second brewer was a scratch built system it was also 100% electric built over 5 1/2 years ago while working around food grade production jobs so I had plenty of free stainless and containers to pick from and modify. I just had to check in the factories out back graveyard for items of some use. Many items only cost a few 6 packs of swill for the maintenance mechanics. Sold brewer number two 5 plus months ago it's still working last I heard it's out of state. Next unit will be scratch built also 100% electric plus I have Adam's BCS-460 control unit that's on order to control the SSRD's plus the two elements per keggle. Great feature the BCS-460 will switch to one element to maintain temps after running both elements to get up to temp rather fast. I'm going for consistency and nats azz repeatability in times and temperatures thru out the whole brewing prcesss that the BCS-460 can provide. Full control of the brewing process from the beginning with the HLT / MLT water temps up to the suds dispatched from the tap. Fermenter temps also controlled by the BCS-460.

You must have to hate yourself to run gas for brewing in small volumes like 20 gallons or less in these brewing systems and boil pots if your just starting from scratch.

NOTE; ALL THIS IS JMO's FROM ME ONLY AND HOW I FEEL ABOUT ELECTRIC HEATING VS PROPANE AND NATURAL GAS! Please no flame wars wanted or started here. This is just my reply from working with propane, natural gas and now electric brew heating. Note; one must have plenty spare power in amps available to supply the properly amount of electric heating for their brewing system. I for one will not wait for hours to come to a boil with a 1 or 1.5KW 120 heating element system. Go big or go home remember that phrase?

As for all the above reply posting this is only from what I was called a "VISITOR" on this HBT forum by one member of this forum.

Be careful be safe with electricity, build a safe brew unit not just some unit where your name is placed on the best bier of the year award but also to keep your name out of the obituaries. NUFF SAID. CJ............

I can run a brew session on my system for $1.32 in electric costs running 5500W. No way I can get close to that with gas.

The Pol said:

I can run a brew session on my system for $1.32 in electric costs running 5500W. No way I can get close to that with gas.

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Free for me... :cross: Thank you USAF and no utility bills living on-base!

Well, $1.32 is a small price to pay, not to get shot at

Thanks for your service.

Cost was one reason I decided to go with electric in the first place.

conpewter said:

You could also get a GFCI breaker to do the same thing for the whole circuit.

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60A double-pole GFCI breakers are upward of 200 bucks. My entire electrical system, including the standard 60A double-pole breaker set me back slightly less than $125.

conpewter said:

If you do have two circuits in there (one on each hot leg) and they are going to neutral you are going to overload the neutral leg when you have it all running at once. It would be better to actually run some elements meant for 240 and get the proper plugs for them.

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Sorry, not following you here. How is it possible to overload the neutral leg of this circuit? Three 1500W heasticks will draw 40A at most, and the system is sized for 60A. The 240V line can handle 60A, and each switch & plug can handle 20A. Designed a more robust system to avoid overloads. Several trial runs saw no flaws, either in tripped breaker or tripped GFCIs.