Heating elements and immersion chillers

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BetterSense

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I just put an element in my keggle to be like all the other cool kids. But now I realized that I wont' be able to use my immersion chiller anymore, at least not without half of it from sticking up out of the wort, and possibly breaking my heating element. I'm starting to think I should have gone with a heat-stick after all. What does everyone else do?
 
first of all how high did you mount your element(pics). and just use as before just wont be as quick
 
I mounted it as low as possible in my keggle. However a 5 gallon batch does not come up very high in a keggle and my chiller is only going to go into the wort maybe halfway. This is kind of bumming me out right now since I really like my chiller.
 
Not sure what your chiller looks like, but is it possible to create a gap in the chiller that the element could fit through?

I use a chiller similar to this one.

stainless-steel-immersion-wort-chiller-3825-full_1_1.jpg


I simply angle the chiller when I'm putting it in my kettle so that the bottom must rung slides underneath the element and on to the bottom of the kettle, with the rest of the chiller being above the element.
 
Hm. I may be able to separate my chiller coils enough to do that. Otherwise, I guess I could mount the element directly into the bottom of my keggle, sticking straight up. Then it would fit through the center of the coils. It would probably poke out of the wort for small batches, though.
 
I don't believe you want the element exposed at all. I believe it'll burn out. It needs to be submerged completely.

I have seen people bend the elements before so they could still use their immersion chillers, would that be a possibility?
 
the element needs to be completely covered so it dont burn up and you want some space between coils to get max cooling
 
You could semi-permanently mount your chiller in your kettle like a reverse hermes or whatever. Take the element out, attach the chiller, put the element back in between the coils. I've toyed with the idea. Just make sure you can get it out easily for cleaning.
 
I think that would be a nightmare for cleaning.

How bendable are heating elements? If it's possible to bend the element off to the side and kind of follow the kettle wall, there would easily be enough room for my chiller to fit beside it, and I don't think it would cause a heating problem. I just don't want to ruin my heating element if bending it will totally cause it to crumble or something.
 
I think that would be a nightmare for cleaning.

How bendable are heating elements? If it's possible to bend the element off to the side and kind of follow the kettle wall, there would easily be enough room for my chiller to fit beside it, and I don't think it would cause a heating problem. I just don't want to ruin my heating element if bending it will totally cause it to crumble or something.

Nah, if you can take it in and out via some sort of weldless fitting, it wouldn't be too bad.

I can tell you one thing. If your element gets exposed to air and turns red hot for a while, it'll bend like a tootsie roll. Yeah, float switch got installed pronto after that one.
 
I soldered a 1" stainless lock nut to my keggle. It's pretty easy to unscrew, but I bought one of those ripple elements so it kind of swings around when I unscrew it. Also, I do BIAB so that means the chiller would have to stay in all the way through the mash too, if you have to take the heating element out to put it in/out.
 
I just pushed all of my coils closer together toward the bottom and I rest the chiller on top of the heating element.
 
I use an pre chiller, chiller. The coils are all at the bottom, and i just leave it sit on top of the element the last 15 minutes. No problems. So as suggested before, proceed in a normal fashion
 
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