Re: Question for electric brewers

lyned@xxxxxxx wrote:

Thanks for the ideas. After reading through some older posts, I'm
starting to wonder if I even need to control the element. Seems some
brewers boil on full power with 220V, 4500 watts. I just thought the
full power would be too much for 5 gal batches.

Once your wort is boiling (and not counting heat loss trough the sides of your kettel which will vary with ambient temp, material, and size and shape), 4500 watts should evaporate 2 ml of water per second. If you start with 5.8 gallons and plan to evaporate .8 gallons (approximately the typically recommended boil-off rate of 10%/hour for a 90 minute boil), then .8 gallons = 3028.33 ml / 2 = 1514 seconds = 25.2 minutes .... so unless you will be losing a heck of a lot of heat somewhere, 4,500watts is probably more than three times as much as you need when set full throttle. I'd think that about 1,500 watts would be about right, especially considering that you can add an insulating wrap around the kettle during cold weather. You also need to consider heat density based on the power versus surface area of your heating element; too much juice is likely to scorch your wort, which I would think is a good reason to have a smaller element on continuously rather than a high-power element switching on and off. Just my two cents.

Cheers.

Bill Velek - PERSONAL sites = www.velek.com & www.2plus2is4.com
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