Kettle souring in an electric kettle to hold temps

[plazola86]

I'm planning my first sour beer using bootleg biology's sour weapon. They recommend holding at 98 degrees for 18 hours to get the PH down to 3.3. If I use my electric kettle to hold temps would the heating element kill the bacteria when it cycle's one to maintain temps?

 

[crane]

It shouldn't be a problem if you are only maintaining the temperature because the element will only be on for a brief moment every second or whatever your cycle time is set to. If you were to leave the element on continuously and were not recirculating the wort then you would get localized hot spots around the element that can start boiling even though the rest of the wort is much below boiling temperature.