Electric Breweryland

[Barge]

I'm keen to try boiling 25L of wort in a fermenter with either an immersion heater or an element inserted into the fermenter. My questions are:

1. Is it possible to boil 22L of partial mash wort to make a 47L batch. The O.G. of the wort will be around 1.080. Is this too high? Will it scorch? I want to make the most of my brew day and would rather make 2 batches of P.M. than 1 batch of A.G.

2. I saw in other posts to check out gallery pictures of other peoples set-ups. I clicked on gallery in the top menu and seemed to get nowhere. What am I missing?

Cheers fellas!

Barge

 

[Batz]

Barge,
The gallery is not up and running again as yet , Dane is working on it as he finds enough funds to pay for it.

Batz

 

[Backlane Brewery]

Barge, there are a few external gallery type things on the links page in the interim, some have more info than others.

 

[Plastic Man]

Barge

Do a google on plastic electric brewery or electric plastic brewery and you will get a fair bit of info. Unfortunately the info on whether you will scorch your wort is all over the place. Some say you will and other say they are doing it with no worries - it's all down to power per surface area of your element. Get a low density element and you shoudl be OK. There is some great info in teh HBD archives on this. Check out Ken Swartz (i may have got spelling wrong) articles as he covers this.

BUT - I think as you increase the amount of sugars in your wort, the chances of scorching will get higher. You could always stick to stouts and say it is the nice roasted flavour you were looking for....

 

[Barge]

Thanks for the replies, fellas. Looks like i've still got some research...and thinking to do.

Cheers

 

[nonicman]

Barge, I've used an immersion heater to boil my wort in a 30 litre plastic fermenter. I had no problems with scorching, I guess the rolling boil kept the contact to a minimum.
Having said that, I now use a 60 litre SS kettle with gas. With a 23 litre batch the 30 litre plastic fermenter was touch and go as far as boil overs go, and I never liked the idea of boiling in plastic, though I never had any problems and it's better than not brewing .

 

[bonk]

Hi Barge,

more my own observations then any hard facts. i've just finished brewing a pale ale with 100% ale malt. its a 40L plastic bucket with twin belle rings of doom h34r: . only did a 60min boil and no sign of scorching or burnt tastes. this is about my 4th AG beer using the bucket of death and no problems with any of the beers with burnt tastes etc.

 

[kook]

Barge,
The gallery is not up and running again as yet , Dane is working on it as he finds enough funds to pay for it.

Batz

[post="48206"][/post]​

I beleive the funds are there, but there is a lot of work involved in manually migrating the old gallery across which will take time.

 

[PeterS]

Blessed is the mother
Who gives birth to a brewer

Batz Brewery

Aamen.... :beer:

 

[Plastic Man]

Bonk

Do you reckon you'd get away with only using one Belle element??

Getting it to the boil would be slower of course - but would one keep it at a good rolling boil ??? Or do you find you really need two.

A pale Ale's a pretty good test for scorching. If you didn't taste any scorching in a pale beer then I think we are OK.

cheers - Richard.

 

[bonk]

Plastic Man,

i put 2 in mainly to bring it to the boil faster and then switch one off. i also figured if i'm trying to boil 30L+ (only doing 15~20L) at the moment, then the two would keep the large volume at a good boil.

i think we need the myth busters to have a go at busting the scorching theory !

 

[Darren]

Scorching will only be a problem if the elements come in contact with grains (ie if used to heat the mash) or hop flowers getting stuck on the element or of course hops placed into nylon stockings thet come in contact with the element.
Who says scorching is a problem anyhow. I would be more worried about the effects of the heat on the integrity of the plastic bucket. If it splits, boiling wort will cause nasty burns.
cheers
Darren

 

[kungy]

My observations seem to suggest that it is apparently a problem to brew using electricity in America. It seems they consider an electric setup as problematic at best, which is not surprising when they have access to so many cheap HP propane burners.

However in Australia it seems we have a much more open attitude to using electric elements in boiling wort. As such this is the reason i have gone to an immersion element. I know this doesn't answer your question but as such it seems that from Australian Brewers using an element for a OG 1050 batch there is no problems at all. Whether it is a problem for 1050 plus batches others will have experience

Will

 

[Barge]

Thanks fellas.

I think my best option will be to throw a belle element into a fermenter (not literally) and boil up a 1.080 wort and see how she goes. Suck it and see. :unsure:

 

[Malthead]

Does a Birko 300 watt urn have a high or a low density element?

 

[Kai]

Barge,

This may not be relevant in your case, but when I'm doing partials, I leave the extract component out of the boil, so both my volume and my gravity are low. I add the extract during the last five minutes of the boil, just long enough to have it dissolve.

 

[Barge]

Kai,

I was thinking of adding extract to my sparge water to adjust the pH. (I read it in "Converting All Grain Recipes to Partial Mash/Extract" by Schwartz). I've since read that pH adjustment in batch sparging is not really an issue as the S.G. doesn't drop away as in fly sparging.

Funds are an issue at the moment so it doesn't look like i'll be brewing much (let alone investing in gear - i've been asking around at work for any electric kettles people don't need anymore) so i guess i'll have to keep day dreaming.

Cheers,
Barge

 

[GMK]

if u do a search for the E-Bay Items - i posted alink to 2 copper boilers...

One in Melb & one in Sydney - Local pickup.

I use one as my kettle....
there is 2 days to go on the auction and they are currently 20.00 ea

Great as part of an electric brewery....

 

[jaytee]

Kai

but when I'm doing partials, I leave the extract component out of the boil, so both my volume and my gravity are low. I add the extract during the last five minutes of the boil, just long enough to have it dissolve.

Can this be done with any extract & grains brew or does there need to be a high proportion of grain in the recipe before doing this ?

The recipes I've read all have the LME in the full boil so that's what I've done.
I've presumed that I need to boil the LME to facilitate the break, though how much hot or cold break I manage to filter out with a sieve is debatable

A lower gravity and volume boil would be great - I guess this would alter your hop calculations dramatically too ?

When do other PM / extract & grain brewers add their LME ?