Water heater elements and food-grade bukets

[caphector]

I'm wondering if anyone has tried something like this before:

I'm looking at building a temperature-controlled water bath for homebrewing and cooking. I'd like to have a large capacity (mostly for homebrewing) and would like to keep my costs reasonably low.

My goals will be to be able to heat water to mashing temps (140-160°F) and hold it there. I'll have a PID running with a thermocouple for temp control.

My design (only roughly sketched out) would be to take a water heater element and mount it in a bottling bucket in the pre-drilled hole. My concern is that it will get too close to the walls of the container and possibly melt it. I'm not sure what the safe temperature range is, and with 4-5 gallons of water I'd rather not find out just before I start brewing/cooking.

Has anyone tried this before, or does anyone know what the temp range on the food-grade buckets is?

The other reason I'm looking at a bucket over a pot is slightly lower thermal conductivity; it should be slightly more efficient when I'm doing low-temp cooking than a pot would be.

 

[Ohio-Ed]

There are a lot of folks on HBT that have put elements in plastic coolers. Might be one step up for you from a thermal retention perspective.

 

[Mose]

In researching electric breweries I found a few plastic bucket brewers out there, most were overseas. Here's a link to one that describes the process and materials. http://brewery.org/library/ElectBrKS0396.html

It looks like he used a 4500w element on 240v so I'm thinking with careful design you could knock one of these out fairly inexpensively and be off to the races.

Plenty of other guys have built using 120v and two elements on separate circuits to acheive full 5gal batches or one single element and slightly smaller batches. Check out these builds if you haven't already. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/countertop-brutus-20-a-131411/ and https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/simple-brewing-est-2009-build-147021/

They incorporate some of the same things you seem to be talking about just using different vessles. I was thinking the plastic route myself but then was able to get a couple full rubber coated kegs like the Simple Brewery and decided to go that route.

Hope that helps, good luck

 

[caphector]

Mose,

Thanks for that first link; it's exactly the info I was looking for.

 

[Mose]

No worries,

Let us know how it turns out and what you find if you test it. If it works for you I might help a couple buddies build some to save money and space and get some more people brewing.

Good luck.

 

[NoNothing]

Im all for keeping costs down, BUT, if you're going to be spending $5 on a food grade bucket, why not spend $25 on a rubbermaid cooler and have better heat retention like Ohio-Ed was saying.

That's a tried and true design as well, putting a heater element in a cooler.

Just my 2c