• Please visit and share your knowledge at our sister communities:
  • If you have not, please join our official Homebrewing Facebook Group!

    Homebrewing Facebook Group

RIMS Heating Tube

Homebrew Talk

Help Support Homebrew Talk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Has anyone heard of using the heating element from a coffee maker for a RIMS system? I hear they are in the 1 to 1.3 KW range and i would assume are made of food safe materials. Also super cheap. Ive looked around but haven't found anyone mention using one yet.
 
I'd be very surprised if you could find a coffee maker element that would fit well in a rims tube type system - I've had a couple of espresso machines, and one had external elements (Gaggia Classic), and the other has a coil shaped element in a tank shaped boiler (Berezza). They also tend to have odd flanges and the like on them.

Water heater elements are a better fit to water flowing over them along a tube. They're also much cheaper than espresso machine elements (~$50-$100) and you can get them in your local DIY store, saving shipping - you shouldn't need to spend more than $15-$20 on a water heater element. The pipe is the expensive part of a RIMS tube.
 
It's funny you say that because I've been thinking along the same lines. Some espresso machines use something called a thermoblock. It's basically a big block of aluminum that heats up and has a bunch of channels cut into it to pump the water through. I've been looking for a larger version of one but so far haven't found anything.
 
Back
Top