Unorthodox Herm's - opinions and advice welcome

JobeJoe · Mar 30, 2015

Hi Brew Heads!

So about 7 months ago, equipped with a shoe string budget I began the conversion to a Herm's rig. I acquired 3 kegs, converted them to keggles and did some various polishing efforts on all 3. So for the HLT, I used sharkbite connections to get my coil connected to the walls of the keggle.

Again, with a budget I purchased one chugger pump, and a couple mini pumps which are supposed to be foodgrade and high temp, I only plan to use them for hot water, sparging and such.

Here is where my rig deviates from the norm. My brother works for a lab that had heating elements, probes and control units. He was able to get me enough elements for the HLT and BK, two probes and a control unit. Now these devices were designed for an oven that heated microchips to test for failures. With his control unit, I have to use 4 elements, two in each keggle. They are long and unwieldy, and had to be mounted vertically. I do so in a not permanent fashion, as you can, they dangle. Right now, everything is at 115v, so my elements are heating on the slow side.

The control unit talks to a computer, via null modem cable. We have written software to read temps and set temps on both keggles. That part is done. We wired everything in a temp fashion to prove the theory, which was proven. Pictured is how I put in conduit to accommodate this beastly rig, now I am down to terminating leads and connections before hopefully running a simulated batch this weekend.

I know most of you probably never have seen such a ghastly looking rig, but for a sticker price of about $700 total invested, it might just be my poor man's Brutus.

Does anything jump out right away to any of you? Comments? Concerns?

Thanks all,

Joe

broncosaurs · Mar 31, 2015

Does anything jump out right away to any of you?

Yes, the heater rods, are they water proof? Are you sure?
Can part of the rods be out of the water with out burning out or melting?
The plastic on the wire spade connectors will most likely melt.

For the $10-$25 a hot water heater rod will cost you I don't think what you have is worth the risk of getting electrocuted.

JobeJoe · Mar 31, 2015

broncosaurs said:
Yes, the heater rods, are they water proof? Are you sure?
Can part of the rods be out of the water with out burning out or melting?
The plastic on the wire spade connectors will most likely melt.

For the $10-$25 a hot water heater rod will cost you I don't think what you have is worth the risk of getting electrocuted.

Thanks for taking a look. The heating elements are waterproof, tested and restested. I also was skeptical about the rod length protuding above the potential water line, but they are good, heated for over 3 hours with no ill affects. I know what you mean about the spade connectors, I deep sixed those already and have something much heavier duty with some shielding as well.

I'm testing ground to my control unit and my power company ground to make sure there isn't any bonding needing, so far so good.

JobeJoe · Mar 31, 2015

Another thing, I thought about going with more conventional elements, mounted inside towards the bottom, but I'm not sure if they will work with this kind if control unit, which were designed to be used with these type of elements.

orangehero · Apr 1, 2015

There's nothing wrong with using spade connectors, just make sure they are rated for the current draw. Usually 10/12 AWG conectors are yellow, preferably with Nylon insulation.

JobeJoe · Apr 9, 2015

Update: full test run attempted. No boil. Couple of issues, even converted to 240v to both sets of coils, and I could not get above 203°F. I tried to insulate the keggle as much as possible but I just couldn't get the boil. I believe burners just are not powerful enough.

I went to home despot and picked up a camco 4500w ULWD element. My controller will run it, so I'm getting ready to drill and mount these more conventional elements and get rid of the awkward vertical heating trick.