55 gallon electric brew kettle

[Brewvy]

What would be the cheapest best way to set up an electric brew kettle for a 55 gallon stainless steel drum?Most likely 240v ,how many watts to do this fast and efficient?I don't need this all auto controlled to start off.I don't mind flipping a few switches when it gets to temp.I would like to heat mash in water in BK then heat sparge water that would be pumped into a HDPE drum for HLT.Then collect runnings back into BK for boil.Is this possible or would I need too much wattage to do this?Thanks in advance-Brewvy

 

[Ohio-Ed]

Some general ideas...

40 gallons from 60f to 180 in 45 minutes using 16,500 watts at 95% efficiency.

40 gallons from 150 to boiling (212) in 23 minutes using 16,500 watts at 95% effciency.

(16500 watts = 3, 5500watt elements)

That alone is 70amps+ at 240v...

Can it be done, sure... are those times in line and what size service do you have available?

Ed

 

[Brewvy]

Thank you Ed ,times are good ,but I'll have to check on available AMP's

 

[stevehaun]

I have a 55 gallon BK and make 35 gallon batches. I use two 4500 watt elements. I have a 50 amp, 240 vac breaker. It takes about 100 min to get 50 gallons from 50F to 170F. From sparge to boil is not bad because you are only going from 160F to 212F and you can start heating wort as soon as the elements are covered.

 

[Ranger9913]

I am using 2-5500w elements in my 55g HLT and 55g BK. You definitely don't need 3 elements. I'm doing 35g batches just fine and it's taking about an hour or so longer to do 35g batches vs 5-10g batches.

Once a boil is achieved I run one element at 100% and the other at 70% and that maintains a very vigorous boil. Ohio-Ed's times seem a little high to me but on par with what I've experienced.

My drums are non-insulated right now and once I insulate them I would expect to see a lot of improvement.

 

[Budzu]

I've done electric boils in 55g blichmann, now I do 75 gallon boils with TWO 5500 watt elements at my pub. I too was expecting to need much more power.

Heating times don't scale up like you would think.. its not just an equation. There are many other factors.

 

[Cpt_Kirks]

I've done electric boils in 55g blichmann, now I do 75 gallon boils with TWO 5500 watt elements at my pub. I too was expecting to need much more power.

Heating times don't scale up like you would think.. its not just an equation. There are many other factors.

Well, if you insulate your BK, start with 150*F wort, and keep a lid on the BK until the boil is going, you save a lot of time.

 

[kal]

I am using 2-5500w elements in my 55g HLT and 55g BK. You definitely don't need 3 elements. I'm doing 35g batches just fine and it's taking about an hour or so longer to do 35g batches vs 5-10g batches.

Once a boil is achieved I run one element at 100% and the other at 70% and that maintains a very vigorous boil. Ohio-Ed's times seem a little high to me but on par with what I've experienced.

Have you ever tried running just the one 5500W element at 100%? Not a vigorous enough of a boil with a ~35 gallon (pre-boil) batch?

Kal

 

[Ranger9913]

I have tried it and it definitely needs the second element. Maybe once I insulate the kettle I will be able to low the duty cycle down to 50% or 60%.

 

[kal]

Good to know - thanks!

Kal

 

[Harvestsmiles]

So if I wanted to do a 55 gallon system. I would need 3 seperate circuits right? 1 for each of the 3 seperate stainless 55 gallon drums to have; 2 each of the 5500 elements? and what size breaker? Is this based on a single phase element? Any difference if I use a 3-phase element? ***I was a couple points shy of engineering when it came to math

 

[Harvestsmiles]

Wow, I just did a quick search and 55 gallon stainless drums for $1000??? I have found larger vessels for much less-like dairy processing equipment which offeres some 100-200 gallon vessels for ~$500 Should I go bigger if it is cheaper for the vessel? How much difference for a 100 gallon or a 200 gallon vessel?

 

[Ranger9913]

I use one circuit at 60 amps, However, I do not run 4 elements at a time only 2. 3Ph elements are very expensive. Also, there are no elements in the mash tun only in the HLT and BK so if you designed a circuit for both you would need either two 60A circuits or 4 30A circuits.

I plan to build my next control panel utilizing 30A circuits.

 

[milldoggy]

How much difference for a 100 gallon or a 200 gallon vessel?

About 100 gallons

 

[krock]

What does your schematic look like for the two element setup? Are they in parallel controlled by the same SSR or are they independent with separate PIDS and SSRs?

 

[audger]

Heating times don't scale up like you would think.. its not just an equation. There are many other factors.

there are some smaller factors like insulation values, latent heat of vaporization, etc. but other than that it is really pretty linear. if you double the heat going in, the time-to-heat is halved. if you double the amount of water being heated, time-to-heat is doubled. its almost a direct linear equation...

one interesting statistic about boiling though, is; if you want to boil off 1 gallon of water, it takes 7.5 times the amount of energy to turn 1 gallon of 211 degree water into steam, as it does to heat that one gallon from 60 to 212 degrees.

 

[hampdenbrewing]

I am building my system with (2) 5500W each in the HLT and BK. I will be using a PID for each kettle with an 25A SSR for each element. Also have a 2 pole 30A contactor for each element before the SSR. The manual for the PID controller says it can operate up to 5 SSRs in parallel. I'm only going to run one kettle at a time so a 60A circuit will be sufficient. I added a selector sw. in the circuit that controls the contactors so that only one kettle could be run at a time.

 

[pat2002tii]

how do you control the percentage of power to each element? I am using 1 5500W element on my HLT and one 5500W on my BK. They are either 100 percent on or off. I have a 15 gallon setup now, but want to go larger and will have to add another element.