I ordered the 1500W version yesterday. My plans for it are as follows:
1) Supplement my propane burner, specifically for mash and sparge water heating to drive my propane costs lower. It will cost me about 20 cents an hour to run the Hotrod, and I'd guess the propane is around 10 times that depending on how high it is turned up.
2) Save time - I ordered a 15amp smart outlet and temp controller to go with it (my current Inkbirds and smart outlets are 10A max). Eventually I envision having my entire volume of mash and sparge water in one kettle, and have the Hotrod start at some point very early in the morning and wake up to fully heated water. This would save me a solid half hour on brew day, maybe more, especially for a 10 gallon batch.
I found one review online that stated the 1650W version would heat 9 gallons of water at a rate of just over one degree per minute. I would hope it would be easy to scale that in either direction based on the volume of water being heated.
Has anyone else observed this rate of heating as well? For the 1500W version I'm thinking of just starting under the assumption that it will do exactly one degree per minute in 10 gallons of water. If it is a little slower than that I can tweak the timing after the first try; the temp controller should keep it from over shooting.
(Hopefully the temp controller and smart outlet mfgs aren't embellishing the numbers since I'll be right at the limit for both)
Once I have wort I'm still planning to pull out the heat stick and use the propane to go up to boil and maintain the boil to simplify cleaning, fine adjustments in temp once boiling etc, but this could still cut my gas use in half if this thing will be good enough to handle the initial heating of the mash and sparge water.
Did my first 10 gallon batch last weekend and probably went through the better part of a full propane tank.
1) Supplement my propane burner, specifically for mash and sparge water heating to drive my propane costs lower. It will cost me about 20 cents an hour to run the Hotrod, and I'd guess the propane is around 10 times that depending on how high it is turned up.
2) Save time - I ordered a 15amp smart outlet and temp controller to go with it (my current Inkbirds and smart outlets are 10A max). Eventually I envision having my entire volume of mash and sparge water in one kettle, and have the Hotrod start at some point very early in the morning and wake up to fully heated water. This would save me a solid half hour on brew day, maybe more, especially for a 10 gallon batch.
I found one review online that stated the 1650W version would heat 9 gallons of water at a rate of just over one degree per minute. I would hope it would be easy to scale that in either direction based on the volume of water being heated.
Has anyone else observed this rate of heating as well? For the 1500W version I'm thinking of just starting under the assumption that it will do exactly one degree per minute in 10 gallons of water. If it is a little slower than that I can tweak the timing after the first try; the temp controller should keep it from over shooting.
(Hopefully the temp controller and smart outlet mfgs aren't embellishing the numbers since I'll be right at the limit for both)
Once I have wort I'm still planning to pull out the heat stick and use the propane to go up to boil and maintain the boil to simplify cleaning, fine adjustments in temp once boiling etc, but this could still cut my gas use in half if this thing will be good enough to handle the initial heating of the mash and sparge water.
Did my first 10 gallon batch last weekend and probably went through the better part of a full propane tank.