quickly heating up water?

Hey gang....

I'm just toying with ideas to quickly heat up water (electric stove). I have a 10 gallon pot. right now just on my canning element (2600 watts) I can get 8 gallons to boil in about 1hr.

I have an idea to make a reverse wort chiller and send water through the oven , close to the broil coil to heat it up as it goes through the water heater coil into into the HLT.

Or while i'm mashing, get my next batch of water up to temperature faster in the oven. It's a higher wattage than my burners. Just help it to get up to the right temp faster than a range element.

Anyone have any tricks or thoughts?

Gas tank and outdoor gas burner will run your pot hot fast. If you want quick heat, that's your best option.

I almost always brew outdoors but I used a 110 heatstick to supplement my stove burner when I brewed a batch indoors a couple of months ago. I don't remember how long it took 7 gallons to get to a boil, but I remember thinking that it wasn't too bad. I had no trouble getting my sparge water up to temp during the mash.

I think a heat stick is much easier and probably cheaper than your circulate through the oven idea

Would the hoses withstand the broiler? (not sure how an electric oven coil sits)

Or, put 3 gallons into a stock pot on your next hottest burner, so you've got two burners heating your liquid at once. Dump it into the large pot once they're both boiling.

The night before I brew I always turn my water heater up to the highest setting. This makes the water come out of the tap around 155-160 I sparge with that water and you are that much closer to 212. It makes alot of difference when we're talking about heating up large amounts of water on brew day

cool thanks for the info guys... the coil inside the oven would come out of oven door so no hoses would be inside the oven. I'll just have to get a turkey fryer.

DeafWes said:

I have an idea to make a reverse wort chiller and send water through the oven , close to the broil coil to heat it up as it goes through the water heater coil into into the HLT.

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I see no way in which that could go disasterously wrong.

Other options include:

1. A heatstick.
2. An electric tea/coffee kettle (boil in small batches and add to the big pot).
3. Outdoor turkey fryer.
4. Vigorously rub the side of the kettle to generate heat.

It'll take much longer to heat it up in your oven vs. the stove, and the "reverse wort chiller" idea won't do anything for you. 1 hour to bring 8 gallons to a boil isn't bad at all for an indoor stove. The only practical way to boost it is a heat stick or using multiple pots like others suggested.

But really, that sounds like a good heating rate to me. My big old gas burner on my kitchen stove probably isn't even that good. Just plan your brewday accordingly; I like to measure out my strike water the night before, then wake up at 5 or 6AM and turn on the burner. Then I can nap on the couch while it's heating up.

savannahbrew said:

The night before I brew I always turn my water heater up to the highest setting.

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From my understanding hot water from those heaters aren't technically considered potable. Bacteria can live in them if they aren't set properly, sediment builds up, the anode deteriorates, metals can leech in, etc...

Conventional wisdom is "don't drink hot water from the tap". It's perfectly safe to wash/clean/etc with, but generally not considered something you want to drink regularly.

I'd love to find a source for some harder data than "this is what I always here" but in the face of unknown I'll gladly just use cold water and heat it up.

I start with hot water from my hot water tank. The fears about drinking water from your hot water tank are mostly overblown. If you have a modern gas-heated hot water tank, it's a non-issue.

Metals? What metal? It's natural gas, so there's no anode to release metals into the water. Any metals already in the water are in the cold water too, so it's a non-issue.

Bacteria? It's city water, treated with chloramine. And it's 130° F in there. And even if something somehow survives all that, I'm going to boil it for at least an hour. Trust me, there's far, far more "bacteria" on your milled grains than are in the water in your hot water tank.

kombat,
All hot water heaters have a sacrificial anode in them. It is made out of a more reactive metal than steel. It is likely magnesium. There are thermophilic bacteria that only thrive in the temperature of a hot water heater. Regardless of all of that, if your water doesn't have that characteristic sulfur smell from the bacteria, I would have no concerns about drinking it.

savannahbrew said:

The night before I brew I always turn my water heater up to the highest setting. This makes the water come out of the tap around 155-160 I sparge with that water and you are that much closer to 212. It makes alot of difference when we're talking about heating up large amounts of water on brew day

Click to expand...

i do the same thing! thought i was the only one. my water ia right around 165* or so turned all the way up. its a 6 month old conventional gas water heater
i always wondered if those last few degrees away from 170* were hurting my efficiency
i only use this for the sparge though i mash in with cold tap water. the city water i have here in NJ happens to be great tasting so i have never messed with water chemistry as seems to be the in thing with homebrewing these days...

kombat said:

...
Bacteria? It's city water, treated with chloramine...

Click to expand...

You'll need a campden tablet, or your beers will taste like the smell of a fresh box of bandaids after a few weeks, and it gets worse, not better.

(lesson learned!)

Google "don't drink hot water from the tap" and start reading.

I will never drink hot tap water again myself, and NEVER cook food for the family with it. The house I live in is plenty old enough to have lead pipes and fittings.

Hi guys,
I think this might actually be my first post on this site. I have been getting great info from it for over a year and been brewing with great success. Finally I found out about a way to heat large volumes of water for free just by chance and thought it was worth sharing.
I usually brew 30gallon batches and waiting for 4 hours for the water to boil in the winter is becoming a nightmare. Thats when I found out about the Hikoil coil.

I picked up a 40 gallon Stainless Steel electric water boiler from a friend for free. I will remove the electrode and hook it up to my wood burning stove using a HIKOIL coil. You can find it at hikoil.com and they advise on installation.

It sits in the stove and heats the water flowing through it and it circulates through the system by means of a process called hydronics. Therefore no electric pump is needed. You can even hook it up to your existing boiler to expand the volume of hot water.
For now I am just going to hook it up to this one boiler and pipe it in to the houses hot water mains and then turn off my existing electric boiler until spring comes and I can work outside. I will T in a stainless pipe going straight to my brewing room.
I hope this can help anyone who has a wood burning stove or any other type of furnace.
Cheers,
Steve.

Our domestic Hobbs are designed for normal domestic volumes, when we put large brewing volumes on them they fail, they are not designed for it. They will however work efficiently if the volume is broken down into normal domestic type volumes, so several pots, on several burners is much more efficient than a large pot that is oversize for the heat source. I use three pots on my induction hob and at the same time have my gas burner going, then I just decant it to where I want it.