Problem Boiling 4 gallons with a 2000 watt element

I have a 44 qt bayou pot with. 2k element in it. I can get 4 gallons from 80 degrees to 154 in about 20 mins, but from there to boiling is taking over 40 mins and its a weak boil. Seems like something is not right. The pid is in manual mode 100%. I just added a wrap or reflectix and it did t seem to do much. Any ideas besides adding a second element? I have read this setup should work.

4 gallons should be no issue with 2000w. Do you think your element could be faulty?

What is your supply voltage? I would guess your element is rated 2000 Watts at 240 Volts. If your outlet is 208 Volts (mine is), you might only be getting 1500 Watts. That could be pushing it with 4 gallons.

It's a 120v element on a 20 amp circuit. It's a brewhardware element. I don't think it's faulty but I don't know how to check it either.

In my experience, 220V 30A is really the only way to go. Use a dryer outlet.

That's great but I already built my control box around 120.

Lesson learned for me when it came to being with 110, you need to have a lot of patience. After covering over to 220, I'd go back to propane before I go to 110.

So I guess my cheapest option at this point is to get another 2k element. I don't want to waste all the 110 parts I have.

4 gallons should be no problem for a 2000 watt element. In my set up I use 2 x 1500 to routinely, and vigorously, boil 8 gallons. And my kettle is not insulated. Hit strike temps in about 15 minutes, and about another 15 or less from mash to boil.

Sorry, but I don't have any suggestions to fix the problem. I just wanted to chime in to say you have no need to go to 220. Your set up should work just fine once you figure out the issue.

EDIT: Try this. Don't use the PID when you're boiling. Just plug it straight into the outlet and let it rip. If that solves the problem then we've narrowed the issue down to the controller. And if you're not concerned about minimizing boil off, you might find that you can operate that way indefinitely.

Was the element sold as a 110v?
I agree that you should bypass the controller just to see if the element is working as it should be. Do you have a link to that element?

You should be able to get a testing unit that you plug in to your powerpoint, that you then plug the heating element in to, that tests the 'actual' power being used (I have one, and they are readily available in Australia). I have found that most of the cheap elements draw less power than they claim (note: mostly 240V in Australia).

I would also make sure you element is good and clean, that you don't have a build up of break and crud.

2nd, 3rd or whatever we are on... Try bypassing the controller and running the element at 100%

Gnomebrewer said:

You should be able to get a testing unit that you plug in to your powerpoint, that you then plug the heating element in to, that tests the 'actual' power being used (I have one, and they are readily available in Australia). I have found that most of the cheap elements draw less power than they claim (note: mostly 240V in Australia).

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I've used a Kill-A-Watt meter alongside my 2kW HotRod (same element as here) to check the voltage on the circuit* - at my last rental apartment, that voltage could drop as low as 108V under the load of the element, while registering ~115V under no load. At 108V, the output of the element is only 81% of what it would be at 120V - 1.65 kW.

The voltage can be lower than usual either because of the resistance of the circuit, as I saw, or also possibly because the power into the house is a bit lower than usual due to excessive load in the neighborhood (particularly on a hot day just before dinner time with ACs and electric ovens running). Element powers are specified at the maximum voltage, even though you might not have that coming from the wall.

The best option short of buying an extra element is then is to try another circuit or outlet, wait, or just possibly you could use a 20A variac to boost the voltage back up to the nominal 120V. I'm personally not too sure about operating a variac at that kind of load though, particularly a cheap one.


* Use the standard Kill-A-Watt with another outlet on the same circuit to check the voltage - it's not built for 20A, so plugging a 2kW element in through it causes it to heat up - I ran it for about 5 minutes like that, but I wouldn't recommend it. A multimeter is also fine for testing voltage, provided you can connect it to an outlet safely. Or you could build a volt and ammeter into your control panel.

Oops

2kW will heat at a rate of 3.4F per minute, without losses.

Your heating from 80-154 would indicate that it is doing exactly that.

That would lead me to beleive that the element, the power source, are not to blame. Its hard to imagine that losses would be either with those numbers provided. Im guessing that large kettle is just acting as a huge heatsink and destroying the efficiency of your element.

The Blichmann boil coil for thier 7.5 gallon kettle is only 2kW... so it should do it.

Well just tried it plugged in direct and got the same results getting to 150, but it's still not boiling and its been 35 mins and its only at 204. This sucks.

I just tested the 2k with 5 gallons in an HDPE bucket and it boiled pretty well.

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If it heats from 80-150 in 20 minutes, that is mathematically what it should do. Meaning, your element is producing the advertised BTUs. Sadly, that heat is being lost too quickly to boil well.

All things equal, a 2kW element should get you from 80-210F in 40 minutes. Once you get there, things get a little more complicated with the energy required to change phase, from a liquid to a vapor. It requires 1000BTU/lb to convert that boiling temp water, to steam. It requires 4160 BTU to get your 4 gallons from 80-210F. However, to boil off ONE GALLON in an hour would require an additional 8,345 BTUs.

Your element produces 6800BTU/hr. A weak boil is to be expected. Depending on the thermal characteristics of the kettle, maybe a very weak boil.

Bobby_M said:

I just tested the 2k with 5 gallons in an HDPE bucket and it boiled pretty well.

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Bobby I believe you, I don't understand why I'm having so much trouble. Would soldering the terminal connectors make a difference they are currently just crimped.

Duplicate

FizzerNoob said:

Your element produces 6800BTU/hr. A weak boil is to be expected. Depending on the thermal characteristics of the kettle, maybe a very weak boil.

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But what's interesting is that this goes against real life experience. Bobby just posted a pic of 5 gallons of boiling water. Looked like a strong boil to me. I personally have vigorously boiled over 8 gallons over water with two 1500 watt elements.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not buying that he should expect a weak boil. He should be just fine unless there's something weird going on that's sucking all the heat out of the kettle.

Are you located in Antarctica by any chance?

Thankfully, no. Upstate NY, it's 80 degrees out right now. And the pot is sitting in a plywood bench, I don't see that absorbing that much heAt

Once the water is at say 210F, regardless of 4 or 8 gallons, 3,000 watts is much more powerful than 2,000. At that point the energy input is simply to create vapor, and 3kW is much better at it than 2kW. It's easier to create a pound of vapor with 3kW than with 2kW. The liquid volume doesn't matter so much at that point, because it's already near boiling, it's only about changing phase.

Are you totally sure your PID is in manual, 100%? It doesn't make sense that you get a 3.4F per minute rise to 150F, and half that from 150F to boiling. Is it hitting 210ish and just stalling out before a boil?

Bobby_M said:

I just tested the 2k with 5 gallons in an HDPE bucket and it boiled pretty well.

Click to expand...

Well Bobby, that makes me feel better since you just shipped me one today. This post had me nervous even though mine will be for my hlt and augmenting boil. Think OP could have a faulty element?

Nonetheless, I'm stoked to get my heatstick.
Best of luck to OP, will be watching.
Sorry if off topic

I posted from my phone so I had to be brief but one thing I did find was that although the boil looks pretty vigorous, the liquid temp several inches off to the side of the element location was running about 2F below our boiling temp of 212F. The boiling was a bit localized but I don't think it matters. I think 2k is right at the threshold of being good enough for 5 gallon boil. I'd sure like an extra 300 watts or so and it would still work on a 20 amp circuit. A pair of 1500s would probably be not only faster, but easier to power because many people don't have a dedicated 20 amp.

If you have a multimeter measure the element resistance. It should be around 7.2 ohms. This would confirm that it is indeed 2000w at 120v

A quick and easy potential fix may be to wrap the kettle in a towel or two to insulate it. When I was using 2 1500w heat sticks, this decreased the time of heating. Might save you some heat loss.

Don204 said:

Well just tried it plugged in direct and got the same results getting to 150, but it's still not boiling and its been 35 mins and its only at 204. This sucks.

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Those numbers make sense to me. Warning - some (mostly simple) thermodynamics follows:

The heat loss from the walls of your kettle to the air (and your plywood base), as well as by evaporation from the wort surface, is proportional to the temperature difference (everything else being equal). If it's 80F where you are, then the heat losses at 140F are half of what they are at 200F. If you only have only a small amount of power more than you need to reach a boil, then the rate of increase will slow down by a large factor as you get close to boiling. The boil-off rate you eventually achieve is set by the amount of power available after subtracting your heat losses (as stated by other posters). You can measure your heat losses by turning the element off and measuring the rate of cooling of the wort - lid off for walls plus evaporation, lid on for wall losses only. If you have a breeze or other airflow, the heat losses will go up substantially, particularly on humid days.

You will have much higher losses from a large 11 gal uninsulated kettle than Bobby has from his HDPE bucket - SS is a better heat conductor than HDPE, so your kettle walls are hotter. The entire wall of the kettle is probably very close to your wort temperature, while Bobby's bucket will probably only be as hot as the water where the water is in contact with the inside of the bucket wall. This means that you might well effectively have two times the surface area losing heat, so losses that are twice as high as Bobby's bucket.

I can't boil 7 gal of wort in a sensible amount of time in my uncovered uninsulated 8 gal SS kettle using just a 2kW HotRod (drawing ~1.8kW on my wall voltage according to my Kill-A-Watt) without supplemental heat. It seems to stall at around 200-205F in a cool apartment kitchen (I tried this in winter). Your kettle is even larger, and will have higher losses than I do. Note that the volume of the wort doesn't matter very much here, it's mostly the size of the kettle that determines the heat losses. More or less wort doesn't really affect the maximum (equilibrium) temperature, just the rate of increase to that temperature.

Brewing systems like the Grainfather and Braumeister use insulated kettles with lids so that they can get away with 1.6kW and 2KW respectively. Even then, they apparently only get around half a gallon per hour boil off - one gallon an hour needs more heat input.

TL;DR version: Insulate your kettle, and put a lid on it until it boils. Even then, you might want more heat.

Yep
+1
Wrap it with a towel

And put the lid on until you get a boil going.

I get a gentle, rolling boil on 4 gallons with an 1800W induction cooker.

Awesome replies here. It's just underpowered.

I have one wrap of reflectix on it now, maybe I will add a second. The lid on until it boils won't be a problem? All the nasties should escape during the boil I imagine. I'm feeling like I may just add a second element anyway to speed things up, I should have less evaporation if I can reach a boil quicker right?

I wonder if there is a foam board I could put under the kettle insulate the bottom.... It would have to handle high temps, any thoughts?

Insulate, lid on until the boil begins... I'd personally add another element. An 11 gallon SS kettle, is worlds apart from an HDPE bucket in terms of thermal properties.

Don204 said:

I have one wrap of reflectix on it now, maybe I will add a second. The lid on until it boils won't be a problem? All the nasties should escape during the boil I imagine. I'm feeling like I may just add a second element anyway to speed things up, I should have less evaporation if I can reach a boil quicker right?

I wonder if there is a foam board I could put under the kettle insulate the bottom.... It would have to handle high temps, any thoughts?

Click to expand...

Could probably use foil covered foam, though I'm not sure how it would handle the weight

I use a Brewhardware 1500 watt stainless steel 120 volt element. My brewpot is insulated with that foil insulation. It will boil 6 gallons of wort vigorously.

So in case anyone is interested I picked another 2000 watt element and hotrod heat stick from Bobby and I got 6 gallons from 150 to boil in 19 mins