120v Brewing System? Apartment Brewing

I have been doing some research and have not really found a clear answer if a 120v all grain brewing system is possible. I would like to go either the RIMS or HERMS route but from what I have seen at 120v is simply not enough power.

I have all the components largely for a system with just some minor upgrades needed. I'm looking to brew at the most 6-7 gallon batch.

My current setup includes:
-15 gallon boil kettle with 2x 1500watt heating elements
-15 gallon keggle HLT with 1375 watts
-cooler MLT
-chugger pump
-therminator
-a bunch of quick disconnects and silicone tubing-
-4 foot SS table

I plan on being in apartments for some time and do not have access to 20amp outlet or installing a spa panel. Thanks for any help!

 

Yes there is mention of others doing this with 2 15amp outlets off 2 separate circuits .. if you wrap or insulate the kettles it works best. the boil is weak and it takes a while to get there but it works.

 

My concern was at 120v , the mash temps wouldn't be able to be sustained using HERMS or RIMS. Is this right?

 

I am pretty sure that is not the issue. Your strike water can be heated to temp in about 25-30 minutes with a 1500W elelment. So why would RIMS or HERMS consume more?

You real issue is the boil. You 3000W to GET 8 gallons to a boil in an insulated pot. So now you have two dedicated 15 amp circuits running at 80% (approximately) of their capacity for about 2-hours. When Buffy flips on the wrong light switch you could be finding the flipped breaker awful quick.

Very doable but involved.

 

I live in an apartment style condo. I had a similar dilemma. It boiled down to (get it) 2 options for using power. First was to bridge a dedicated kitchen split plug. If you use a multimeter on the both "hot" sides of the plug at the same time it should output 240v. Or if the building uses commercial power (likely does) 208v. Older buildings have them at 15A, newer at 20A. Output 3000-4000w. Some people might look at you a little sideways if you had 2 plugs into the "same receptacle" going into one control panel box.

Other option is to use the existing 14-50 plug hidden in behind the stove. Unfortunately it means I need to move the stove about a foot out from the wall every time I want to brew. In the grand scheme of things it is still way less effort than doing a split boil on the stove and waiting forever to do so. If you choose this method you may plug the spa panel with GFCI into the stove outlet. I'm a risk taker and didn't.

I am near perfecting my 2 vessel e-brewing system. I am actually about to transfer from the tun to the BK on a "how to 2 vessel brew" I plan on posting in the section.

**Disclaimer**
Make sure you know what you're doing with power before messing with it. Consult an electrician. If you fry yourself or burn the house down it isn't my fault or that of HBT. I may have personally decided not to use certain safety features, and may not be an ideal role model.

 

Double post, I know. I completed my write up of using the simplest electric brew kettle that I've seen. It uses the existing stove plug that all apartments should have available. While I can't offer any advice on HERMS or RIMS I do hope that you'll find something helpful out of it.

 

Don't let anyone tell you you can't do it on 120v, I've been doing it for a while now. I have 2 15amp circuits in my garage, and, with insulated (reflectix) vessels I have no issue doing 6.5-7 gallons into fermentor. The boil is not trying to jump out of the boil kettle, but it is a good boil. Now I have a rims system, too. I have no issues.

 

To muddy the water even more...

If your house/apartment is in the butter zone of code adoption, you likely unwittingly have a 220V outlet right in your kitchen and you do not even know it. If you have both a dishwasher and garbage disposal plugged into the same duplex outlet and you house was built before 2002'ish and after 1990'ish that outlet likely has a piece of 12/3 going to it and two 15 or 20 amp breakers in the panel that are ganged together.

This is sadly no longer allowed but it is two circuits, one from each leg, sharing a neutral.

 

Lets compare. 7gallons, 72F - 155F - 212F. Typical brewday by time. (Heres the calc I used)

3000W @ 120VAC (2.53F/min rise) 25A
72 to 155: 32.8min
155 to 72: 22.5min

5500W @ 2400VAC (4.65F/min rise) 23A
72 to 155: 17.8min
155 to 72: 12.3min

So, 1.83 x the wattage gives us 54% of the time required*. I think you can sustain with this power**.


*The power here is not exact. You are likely running these elements at 107-115V which would LOWER the effective wattage. Same on the 5500W running at 208-220V
**Assuming that you have GOOD wiring (short run, 10GA wire), 30A of power and only your heating elements on the 30A breaker, and that the HLT does NOT run while the kettle runs.

 

I run two 2000W 120V elements on two circuits in my kitchen. 6 gallons will boil plenty quick and once it's there the 4000W is totally overpowered so I run one element full on and the other I cycle about 5 minutes on and 5 minutes off. 11 gallons will have a vigorous boil, but takes a while to get there. I'm still doing extract, so it takes about 20 minutes to get to steeping temperature and then another half hour to get from there to boiling. If I'm really in a hurry, I have a 1500W heatstick I can run on a third circuit, but that gets complicated.

 

120v is absolutely enough, as long as you don't have a really wide kettle with tones of surface area. I run a single 2000W element in a 11 gallon king kooker (same as the bayou classic pot a lot of people use) and it can boil a in there, slightly faster with insulation but it works without as well.
it can boil the full kettle it just takes for ever to get that volume up to temp. normally I do BIAB and start with 8 or so gallons for a full volume mash and that takes 45-60 min depending on exact temps. then it only takes 30 min or so to get to a boil from there.

I am thinking about getting a cheap immersion heater in the 1000-1500W range to plug into a second circuit just to make getting up to mash temp quicker. some thing like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/171376872247?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

 

This compares heating the total volumes. Typical brew day would be heating a smaller volume of strike water and mashing in, then while the mash is resting you have plenty of time to heat sparge water, then the difference to boil time is not that great. I think this is an unfair comparison, and real world would be 15-20 minutes, and not the 34 minutes you have shown.