Considering electric boil kettle

[dunney]

Hi all. I'm in the process of setting up a 50L kettle with electric heating element.
I have pulled the elements from 2 cheap Kmart kettles (2400w I think they are). And can decide whether to put them in or hold out for a larger element.
Questions I have:
Will these 2 elements provide a vigorous enough boil?

Will they take forever to heat strike and sparge water?

Will they cost a fortune to run?

Would appreciate advice from anyone who has gone down the same road and has answers for me.

 

[roller997]

2 * 2400 Watt would give you a very vigorous boil - I would suggest that with 4800W, the evaopration rate might be a bit high and if you insulate the kettle / HLT you should be able to switch back to just 2400W assuming you are intending on boiling around 40liters. I know that there were some reports of 2200Watt elements being enough to boil double batches.

I run a 3000 Watt (albeit double wall insulated) 60l urn and that has a very good rolling boil on it.

The cost is 4.8KW per hour that you run them, so check to see how much per KW you pay and multiply it by 4.8 for each hour.
The two elements would warm up the HLT water much quicker so I suspect they would be cost neutral or possibly cheaper since there is less time for heat to be lost than if you run one element.
Once it boils and assuming it is well insulated, you can turn one of the elements to reduce the running cost by 50%
The better you insulate it, the lower your ongoing running costs will be.

The main concern I would have with your elements is that they might be high density elements, in which case you could be scorching the wort and end up with burnt flavour in your wort as well as elements that burn out very quickly as they can't dissipate the heat.
That is one reason why lower density elements are usually favoured, however low density elements are relatively expensive ($120 for pre-bent 3000W element from Romar) but they don't scorch the wort and last quite long.

 

[mofox1]

I currently use a single Camco 3500W element each in my kettle and HLT. When insulated with a mutilated camp mat it will bring 55L to a decent but not vigorous) boil.

The kettle has the "ultra low watt density" element to avoid/reduce risk of scorching, whereas I just went the slightly cheaper high watt density for the HLT. Unless I'm really trying, it's hard to burn water

Both elements were fairly cheap... ~$15 - $25 ish bought via Amazon (postage is only about $15 combined).

No idea how much they cost to run, but I figured it was going to be cheaper than gas (at least swap'n go gas anyway), although that wasn't the reason behind the electric setup.

BTW... Blichmann has released some *very* fancy super ultra go-go-gadget low watt density elements that form a double ring around the pot... but they are pretty f'kn exy.

 

[michaeld16]

Hi mate i use 2 kettle elements in a keggle gets to a boil quite quickly and i havr to turn one off when i reach boiling, just keep in mind that each of these elements draw 9 to 10 amps each so when running both at the same time you will need to run
Them on seperate circuits if your plugging into 10amp powerpoints. As for scorching ive never had a problem. They have probably run for about 10 hours or so still going, only just started using them recently so cant really vouch for how long they will last yet i really only put two in just incase one died mid boil because i imagine they probly wont like running constantly for hours on end.