Electric Home Brew Conversion

[Grundysidemount]

Hey everyone,

I have attached a photo of my current setup. I am currently using 3 vessels to do 3 extract brews at once.

I would like to get away from propane and move to electric. I am wondering what I need to order and what I need to do to my current kettles to make this happen.

I want to set this up to continue to do extract, but sometime next year would like to turn this into a rims system.

Once I go all grain and turn this Into a rims system, will I still be able to do 3 extract brews at once?

The goal would be to do 3 extract brews on day 1 and 1 all grain brew day 2. This will give me 4 batches for my 4 tap kegerator.

Hope that makes sense.

Thanks in advanced.

 

[Wizard_of_Frobozz]

If I understand correctly, you want to be able to run all 3 kettles at the same time? Depending on the size of the electric heating elements you install in those kettles, that is going to need a lot of power.

Typically, people use a 5500W heating element in a kettle. Power = Volts x Amps, so...3 x 5500W/240V = 68.75 amps. Pretty high current; not impossible to do, but that will require some really big (and expensive) wiring to make work. AWG wire gauge 4 will be the minimum size, and possibly even larger (lower gauge number = bigger wire) depending on the distance from your breaker panel to your rig. You need to make sure that the wire and breakers you select match the maximum possible current the system can draw.

Controls are another concern - you don't want to manually switch that much current on and off - that leads to arcing across the switches, burning things up, and causing electrical fires. You'll need a control system designed to manage 3 heating elements at the same time, which is not a common setup. Probably going to need to design it yourself, and you really don't want to do that unless you know what you are doing.

Some possible options to consider:

1. Break it up into separate circuits and have different wire runs to each element; that would make the maximum wire size smaller, but you'd need more of it (and breakers for each circuit, available space in your electrical panel, etc. Controls will probably be more complicated.
2. Select smaller heaters to minimize the current needs - that will translate into longer heat up times, but people typically don't need the full power during the boils, so it might be a good compromise.
3. Drop down to only 2 simultaneous batches - that's much more manageable from an electrical supply and controls perspective.

Nothing is impossible, but trying to run 3 big heating elements at the same time is challenging.

 

[Snuffy]

https://www.homebrewing.org/Brewers-Edge-Mash-Boil-All-Grain-Brewing-System_p_7497.html