Wort sloshing

[zGrubermeister]

I'm currently brewing my first batch in my newly built e-kettle. I have a single heating element set up along the diameter of my kettle. I'm boiling 3 gallons of wort in a 6 gallon kettle. The boiling action is generating A LOT of side-to-side sloshing action. I have turned down my temperature controller to 210* so it kicks the boil on and off instead of 212* which I'm sure ill slosh wort out my kettle. Is the intermittent boil going to have an adverse affect on my beer?

 

[Walker]

Sloshing the boil around isn't going to cause any problems by itself, but the control of a boil kettle generally isn't done by monitoring temperatures because the temp of a nice rolling boil is the same as the temp of a violent boil over.

Instead, a manually adjusted intermittent on/off switching of the power to the kettle is how electric boils are maintained at an appropriate strength.

Some folks use a PID that has a manual mode for this, and others use a pulse width modulator. The end result is that you tell your element to be fully powered on (for example) only 80% of the time and the other 20% of the time the thing is 100% off.

 

[zGrubermeister]

Thanks for the speedy reply. I ended up doing the whole boil with my PID on auto mode with it set at 210* and I'm just hoping everything turned out all right. Set at 210* it boiled the water about for about 20 seconds and then it was off about 20-30 seconds before it came on a again.

The problem is my element is on too long. The PID lets the wort cool down to much before it kicks back on. I guess I need to increase its sensitivity so it kicks on more often to hold the temperature range tighter.

My other thought was some sort of baffle to impede the sloshing motion.

 

[Walker]

does your PID support "manual mode"?

 

[zGrubermeister]

does your PID support "manual mode"?

Yes it does. It is an Auber SYL PID.

 

[Walker]

OK. You can set it in manual mode then, set the period of the thing for something like 5 seconds (or whatever you want) and tell the PID to have the element on for "whatever" % of that time.

That will give you the control you want on a boil kettle. You don't need to monitor the temp at all.

 

[zGrubermeister]

OK. You can set it in manual mode then, set the period of the thing for something like 5 seconds (or whatever you want) and tell the PID to have the element on for "whatever" % of that time.

That will give you the control you want on a boil kettle. You don't need to monitor the temp at all.

That sounds great. I was just doing some testing earlier with the PID in auto-mode. I was able to get the settings to a point where it held a boil better without it sloshing so much. What you described seems like it could work even better. I will give it a try next time I test.

On a side note, I am going to fabricate a grate to protect the grain bag from the heating element. I'm hoping the grate disrupts the bubbles from the boil enough to inhibit the sloshing motion.

Thanks for the help.