First answer: consult an electrician or don't play with electric brewing. I won't touch this stuff without professional advice at this point, but I'm wondering if someone can explain to me what happened...
This afternoon I picked up my pre-wired 1200W heating element - drop in water, plug in (don't touch the water), unplug when it's hot. I tested it in a plastic bucket and it worked, though I discovered through a mindless act of stirring the water that it really can buzz you. This might have been the right time to store that thing away, but I foolishly continued.
Next move - use the element to help the wort get to a boil on my gas stove. I didn't dare touch the kettle while the element was plugged in, but it worked as advertised and cut about 10 minutes off of my ramp-up to the boil.
This was a short round-one boil for a gose, my first kettle-soured beer. I got the wort cooled down to lacto-pitching temps, added lactic acid to get to 4.45 pH, and brought the kettle and element into my brewing room. The STC-1000 was turned off but plugged into a power strip that's sitting on a mini-fridge with a white top that seems to be made of plastic. The element was in the kettle. The kettle was sitting on the mini-fridge and not touching the power strip (but maybe there was some kind of short?). I plugged the element into the heating outlet and a fuse popped in the apartment fuse box. I should have stopped there, but I tried a couple more times and it happened again each time.
Now, if the issue was simply, "the fuse pops when a 1200W element is running," I'd say it's just overloading a fuse that is stupidly tied to every outlet in the apartment. However, the element was plugged into an outlet that shouldn't have been supplying any power so I don't get why it would cause a problem. I've tested the outlet by plugging my fermentation fridge into it and it doesn't power the fridge unless the STC-1000 is cycled to heating (which it wasn't at the time of the fuse popping). It seems like the system was shorting out, but how could it short out when the STC-1000's heating outlet wasn't even supplying power?
I won't be messing with this again unless I'm certain that I know what I'm doing (and even then I'll think thrice), but does anyone have any ideas? Also, any emergency suggestions for keeping seven gallons of wort at kettle souring temperatures (preferably ~115F to keep the bad bugs from growing) without a controlled heating element in the kettle? I've got a space heater but it seems like it's only going to keep the wort around 90F, if that.
This afternoon I picked up my pre-wired 1200W heating element - drop in water, plug in (don't touch the water), unplug when it's hot. I tested it in a plastic bucket and it worked, though I discovered through a mindless act of stirring the water that it really can buzz you. This might have been the right time to store that thing away, but I foolishly continued.
Next move - use the element to help the wort get to a boil on my gas stove. I didn't dare touch the kettle while the element was plugged in, but it worked as advertised and cut about 10 minutes off of my ramp-up to the boil.
This was a short round-one boil for a gose, my first kettle-soured beer. I got the wort cooled down to lacto-pitching temps, added lactic acid to get to 4.45 pH, and brought the kettle and element into my brewing room. The STC-1000 was turned off but plugged into a power strip that's sitting on a mini-fridge with a white top that seems to be made of plastic. The element was in the kettle. The kettle was sitting on the mini-fridge and not touching the power strip (but maybe there was some kind of short?). I plugged the element into the heating outlet and a fuse popped in the apartment fuse box. I should have stopped there, but I tried a couple more times and it happened again each time.
Now, if the issue was simply, "the fuse pops when a 1200W element is running," I'd say it's just overloading a fuse that is stupidly tied to every outlet in the apartment. However, the element was plugged into an outlet that shouldn't have been supplying any power so I don't get why it would cause a problem. I've tested the outlet by plugging my fermentation fridge into it and it doesn't power the fridge unless the STC-1000 is cycled to heating (which it wasn't at the time of the fuse popping). It seems like the system was shorting out, but how could it short out when the STC-1000's heating outlet wasn't even supplying power?
I won't be messing with this again unless I'm certain that I know what I'm doing (and even then I'll think thrice), but does anyone have any ideas? Also, any emergency suggestions for keeping seven gallons of wort at kettle souring temperatures (preferably ~115F to keep the bad bugs from growing) without a controlled heating element in the kettle? I've got a space heater but it seems like it's only going to keep the wort around 90F, if that.
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