Finishing up my hot water tank for my keggle all grain system. I was wondering what I would need to have if I was to have an electric hot liquor tank. Is it more economical than propane? How much wattage/voltage would I need? Would it just take for ever to heat the water with a copper manifold? Also what would the cost be? I am not interested in a herms system just want to heat the water for a mash in and sparge.
I can’t tell you if it’s any more economical than propane, but for me, it’s more convenient to use this http://www.amazon.com/Marshalltown-742G-Bucket-Water-Heater/dp/B000BDB4UG/ref=pd_cp_hi_0. I hook it up to a heavy-duty timer the night before I brew and have it come on a couple hours before I wake up. Then by the time I finish my coffee, my water is at strike temp. If you really want to get fancy, you could hook it up to a temp controller and have it heat to a desired temperature.
I use the same sort of horse trough water heater. I fill my mash tun keggle with 15 gallons the night before and I also make sure to have the March pump left open so that when the timer goes off, it automatically recirculates. I find this helps maintain an even temperature, and with a five hour heat up, I achieve 15 gallons of 170oF water. I transfer whatever i don’t need iover to the HLT. This typically drops the temp in the HLT from 170o to 130o because my setup is in a cold garage, but that beats starting at tap water temperature.
Same except I hook it up to a thermostat. It takes about 3 hours to heat up the water.
I got this trick from Crispy. It works great.
You can calculate the propane vs electric if you know your charge for a kilowatt hour and the price of propane per pound. If the 1 kW heater is on for x hours, that is easy to figure. If you know what you paid for a propane fill by the pound, you could put the tank on a scale and see how many pounds it takes to heat the water to the same temp. Then that is also easy to fugure.
Thanks guys. That really helped a lot