turning large coffee pot into kettle

[Geoff81]

I scored when my church was throwing away a nice stainless steel 4 gallon coffee pot that still works. It has a 1500w element. Its heat controlled with a simple thermostat that is clipped to the bottom of the pot. I want to bypass this thermostat since the pot gets really close to boiling and shuts off. It has three wires attached. I'm not familiar enough with ac to attempt this blind. Too dangerous you think? Think not being able to adjust temperature is a problem? I plan on using this for 3 gallon batches and it would be awesome not to have to worry about propane.

 

[fall-line]

It sounds like you have everything you need there to make a nice little boiler. You'll need to remove the built in thermostat for sure. If you wanted to control it manually you could just replace the thermostat with a switch, but you'd do well to consider installing a PID controller for temperature control...they are not expensive.

Before you attempt any of this however, please do your research and learn about wiring, and specifically how appliances like this work. If you read up on how electric hot water heaters are wired for example, you should learn what you need to know.

Proceed with caution. Stay safe and have fun!

 

[biertourist]

Search the Jim's Beer kit (Jimsbeerkit.co.uk) and the Beoir forums (beoir.org) for some UK and Irish home brewer's "Burco Boiler" conversions. -Obviously you'll need a different temp controller but the rest of the conversion should be very similar.

Just search for "Burco Boiler". People use these for both BIAB and stand-alone boilers.


Adam