Electric brew rig owners: How high is your element?

[lael]

I'm working on a new system design and I'm looking to get a sense of how many cm's of water / wort it takes to cover most people's electric elements. If you wouldn't mind posting how high the top of your element is, or how many cms of water it takes to cover it and not run dry, it would be really helpful. Thanks!

Takes about 8 for my braumeister clone.

 

[willo69a]

my keggle is for BIAB and the top of the element is 110mm from the bottom of the keggle. the 3600w element and stainless bling is all from still dragon
cheers willo

 

[Edgebrew]

My element is so high... It's out of the ketle.
Sorry.

 

[angus_grant]

Hi Lael,

It might be an idea to get people to post their pot dimensions as well. My 40cm * 40cm 50L pot would require a different level of water to cover element than a narrower 50L pot (or keggle)

I recall my element requires 9cm 8cm of water which calculates out to about 10L of water.

My minimum required water to fill malt pipe + cover element + 5kg of grain is 20L

Cheers,
Angus.

Edit: found my design spreadsheet which listed element height

 

[mofox1]

I'm working on a new system design and I'm looking to get a sense of how many cm's of water / wort it takes to cover most people's electric elements. If you wouldn't mind posting how high the top of your element is, or how many cms of water it takes to cover it and not run dry, it would be really helpful. Thanks!

Takes about 8 for my braumeister clone.

It's all about the volume per rise (L/cm), which depends on the diameter of your pots.

That was one of the things I was worried about with my build. In my excitement I bought some massive freakin pots, and only considered afterwards that I might have *minimium* volume issues. :blink:

Turns out it didn't matter too much, but you do still want to get the element as low as you can. You do need to consider weld lines or, in the case of kegs, whatever you call those grooves. I gave myself about 1cm leeway from the weld line so I wasn't trying to punch through hardened steel.

Also, it turns out that while 90L pots *are* huge, they don't classify as "freakin massive" (see the thread about the 150L ones!).

At ~46cm wide they hold something like 1.7L/cm. The element boxes (~110mm high) sit close to the bottom of the pot, so the element is ~6.5cm high. This equates to about 11L of water at element level. If you add a couple of cm for boil-dry safety, my minimum batch size is ~16L.

Gratuitous bling pics:

-Mick

 

[claypot]

Hey Mate,
I had my element right on the bottom of keg, I did shag up the design as the element was touching the bottom of keg. Worked very well untill the element failed. I am pretty sure it was due to the element pulsing and pushing onto the vessel.
I have mounted a new one and bent it so I have 5mm clearence around it seems to be all good now. It is a cheap element off ebay - 3Kw. I would say it takes about 2 - 3cm to just cover it. I can't upload pics at the mo but here is a link: http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/57924-braumeister-nextgen-build/page-83#entry1196086
Cheers, Clayton

 

[MaltyHops]

The top of my KK element is about 6cm above the bottom of the kettle and takes about 6L of fluid to cover the element safely when the element is on.

For me it was a trade-off between having enough clearance (~35mm) below the element (and other fittings) to allow whirlpooling to create good trub cone and having the element as low as possible to minimise the amount of fluid needed to cover the element.

My system is designed for recirculating to/fro the mash tun so minimal element covering fluid amount is good and I've looked at ways to add something like a fluid filled "ballast" pot to take up some the volume like pix below. Would be nice to have half-moon shaped pots but couldn't find any.

[zoom]