Electric Kettle

[tdiowa]

Hello to my fellow brewers in the Americas. Several years ago a set out to build a better mouse trap. I found on this forum that my idea of an Electric Kettle could work. So I set about building a better Mouse Trap and I now hyappy to say that I have succeeded. Because of the ideas that I took away from your boards to build my electic kettle I would like to share them with you. I apoligize in advance because all of the measurements are in imperial not metric. You see the Americas have not decided to join the normal standards of measurements.

Several years ago I came upon a BruHeat bucket and started to use it and fell in love with it. I then decided to try and build a better one and ultimately succeeded.

My biggest hang up was controling the water heater element. I did some research and came upon a controller called a simmerstat. Further research convinced me that this would work and I set about building my electric kettle.

I am currently on my third generation of my electric kettle. All have worked flawlessly and I have brewed more then 100 5 gallon batches using my electric kettle.

So after reading the different boards and seeing all the different ideas on building a electric kettle I decided to share mine with my fellow brewers. I have written up very detailed instructions on building one. These include pictures, written instructions, parts list, and diagrams. I have compiled it into PDF format and I am now comfortable releasing it. I would like to post it on this forum but I do not think I can.

So if anyone is interested in receiving these instruction you can download the attached files. If you have any questions I would be more than happy to try and answer them.

TD in Iowa, USA

View attachment The_Electric_Kettle.pdf

 

[Supra-Jim]

Very detailed, nice work.

:icon_cheers: SJ

 

[browndog]

First off, congrats Tdiowa, that is one very informative piece you have written there and it must have taken a considerable amount of time. I'd like to talk about simmerstats, it is my understanding ( and my knowledge is very limited) that these things create quite a bit of "noise" and can cause RF interference, is this correct because I went to the trouble of obtaining a couple of Burst fired controllers from England to aviod this. Any sparkies care to comment?

cheers

Browndog

 

[kram]

Very nice work, i'll be referring to that in the future.

 

[PostModern]

Very nice document. I still rely on manually turning off my 2400W immersion element once I reach strike/sparge temp. Thermostatic control of the HLT is one improvement to my system I would definitely enjoy.

Just want to pull you up on this tho:

I apoligize in advance because all of the measurements are in imperial not metric. You see the Americas have not decided to join the normal standards of measurements.

South America has mostly converted to metric. Even Canada is officially metric. They keep using imperial measures because they deal with you guys so much.

So "the Americas" are mostly metric, like most of the world, just the United States of North America hain't.

 

[pbrosnan]

Hi there,

Thanks for the info. This is exactly what I was thinking of doing myself. I've sourced all the bits and now you doco has given me a working example.

 

[Carbonator]

Nice work on the instructions there TDIOWA.

The diagrams are extremely well done.


Anyone in Aus following those instructions should note in the last diagram that "HOT" is "ACTIVE" in AUS and the wire used instead of black should be brown (red will also do if no brown available). Also Neutral should be blue, not white (black to be used when red is used for active).

The wiring cover, if metallic, should also be connect to ground by a flexible wire.