50A circuit is not that much for 6BBL. Are we talking 3 phase or single phase? If it is single phase we are talking about 10,000W.
How many Watts your element has? I should have about 33,000W for 5-6 BBL system. I should know in a few weeks if it is enough.
Yes, that was a typo. It’s an 80 A circuit, 18 kW element. At 33 kW I think you’ll have a great system.
Thank you.
I will sleep much better now.
I always worried if it will be enough.
Hi Folks,
Been a reader on the forums for a while now, but not terribly active. This is, in fact, my first post.
I appreciated the comments from those who have used / are thinking of using induction elements for cooking. I’m seeing that they are coming down in price on Amazon.
We’re going to be moving (hopefully) to a new place, where I will loose my lovely Natural Gas range, and will only have an electric stovetop. We’re in the Northeast, where brewing weather can be precarious in the winter. I’d love to be able to brew indoors using an induction plate, as all of my pots will work on it.
For those who have used an induction plate, do the 120V elements work well? Will they bring a full boil to 7.5 gal of wort?
Thanks!
I definitely think that installing the element into the kettle would be a great idea.
One 120v element can do 7.5 gallons slowly, but it is much better with two. I used to bring nearly 20 gallons to a boil with three but it took a while. YMMV
Regarding safety issues e.g. being electricuted, I found that when I was using my first heatsticks and moisture was getting in, the short was immediately triggering the circuit breaker.
For me the more basic issue was forgetting to keep them immersed while in use. Pulling them out and watching them immediately fry, has kept from working in haste and not drinking too much homebrew.
Also in terms of heating up water in the basement, I get a headstart by using the hot water from the tap.
I am currently building an all electric brewery following Kal (www.theelectricbrewery.com)'s build and advice. He uses PIDs to control the elements and recommends once a boil is reached to actually lower the temp to around 209 or so as this will still keep enough heat to maintain a rolling boil.
I get this just from reading the site thus far - all my equipment is currently still ‘virgin’ and in boxes in the garage, so I could be mistaken.
I use a PID controller and I ended up setting it as a tight band proportional only controller. It’s very difficult to get a consistent rolling boil and not boil over. Maybe I didn’t have the parameters set right, but it works pretty well this way.
I see that using a PID with a manual mode allows you to set the amount of power applied during the boil and deleting the temperature sensor in the kettle. I was also just noting on the Homebrew Talk forum that the issue of pulse width modulation (PWM) controllers is another relatively easy way to control power in the boil kettle. A PWM controller is very cheap and it hooks right up to your SSR(s). Pretty slick,…I’m considering that option.