My Electric Brewery uses 20 gallon Blichman kettles, a HERMS coil in the HLT to maintain heat, and a control panel I custom built myself to run the show.
My build criteria for system:
100% electric for indoor brewing
Safe, easy, and enjoyable to use
Not limit the brewer in any way
Provide for extremely repeatable and consistent results
Use industrial quality parts that last (all stainless steel, limit the use of plastics)
I also have complete instructions on how to built it from scratch available for free on my website: TheElectricBrewery.com
I heard you on the BN last week and checked your site after hearing the interview. Wow that is one fantastic site! I am in the process of adding temp control to my brewery and I am going to incorporate some of your ideas. The detail on your brewery is incredible, I am sure it will save me a lot of headaches!
Thanks for taking the time to document your setup!!!
Matt
Thanks Matt. Took me a long time to design my setup so I figured the I should document it all so that others that were interested could follow and built the exact same thing. People think I’m crazy giving it all away for free but charging for information wasn’t really something I felt was right. It’s not the right spirit.
That said, had I known how many 100’s of hours it was going to take to document it all, I probably never would have started. It was a crazy amount of work. Once I haad started however I couldn’t stop… I was getting emails every day asking when the “next section” would be up.
Question. Does the heating element in you kettle scorch or caramelize or whatever the term I am looking for you wort to any difference than say a direct fire kettle operation does?
That’s really good to know. That was my concern with electrical systems. Never thought of the fact that as the wort boils it is in constant movement. I’ve always wanted to move my set up to the basement and I think this is totally the way to go. Thanks for posting. Spectacular job, really!!
Ask other electric brewers too and you’ll find that there’s really no issue that anyone has reported. I’ve made the lightest of lagers (basically bud/miller/coors clones) and have zero issues.
is it practicle to have a similar system when the volumes get bigger? For example the Blichmann 55 gal Boilermakers. Would those require 2 heating element?
The jury’s still out on 1 bbl (31 gallon) batches using the 55 gallon pots. I’ve had some people say that one 5500W element is enough to boil that amount but I would probably go with two elements (either 4500W or 5500W each). I’ve never tried it myself. There are a lot of factors involved.
The bottles are slowly being consumed and then that’s it!