Heating Elements In Kettle.. Yes/no?

[seravitae]

Hey guys,

After you've completed mashing, naturally you lauter and sparge, then transfer the liqour to your kettle for hopping, pasturisation, hot breaking of proteins, etc.. Question is, i've never seen a HERMS user with a gas setup. That is to say, I assume that all HERMS users use PID/resistive internal heating elements. It seems kettling is an external-heat job only. Can you kettle-boil your wort with an internal element without fear of scortching?

I don't think you could achieve a rolling boil using the HERMS heat exchanger?



Cheers

 

[Vossy1]

Can you kettle-boil your wort with an internal element without fear of scortching?

Yes. If you were to use a totally overated element v kettle size then scorching could be a problem.
I use 2 x 2.75kw elements to boil 76ltr down to 66ltr over 90 mins (pre boil and post boil vols depend on hop quantity used), with the lid partially on I can get away with 1 element driving the boil.

I don't think you could achieve a rolling boil using the HERMS heat exchanger?

You would be wasting money by trying to transfer heat to the kettle via a HE, when you can apply the heat directly to the kettle in the first place, unless of course the heat used for the HE was waste heat from some other process.

Question is, i've never seen a HERMS user with a gas setup

There's a guy over here in the U.K or Ireland, that uses a gas HERMS set up. The PID unit controls valves, which regulate the gas flow to the burners for the HE.

 

[Sammus]

I use a gas kettle and HERMS... I'm not sure I understand your question, it sounds like you dont quite understand what a HERMS is, but that may be because I'm reading your post wrong.

HERMS users do use a PID or some kind of controller and a resistive heating element, but the heat exchanger (HE part) is a seperate little vessel through which you circulate mash liquor, while mashing, to keep the temperature stable while you mash, to make temperature changes and to help set the grain bed... got nothing to do with your kettle or what you do post mash.

 

[sinkas]

There's a guy over here in the U.K or Ireland, that uses a gas HERMS set up. The PID unit controls valves, which regulate the gas flow to the burners for the HE.

A freind who is a automation and instrumentation consultatnt, reckons that gas is better suited to the herms job, but the control systems are pretty expensive, even compared to true electric heat control (rather than on/off)

 

[enoch]

A freind who is a automation and instrumentation consultatnt, reckons that gas is better suited to the herms job, but the control systems are pretty expensive, even compared to true electric heat control (rather than on/off)

That would be right. You can get a heck of a lot more than 2400W out of a gas burner.
That's why gas instantaneous hot water works so well and the electric equivalent is, well, not equivalent. I would much rather control electricity though.

 

[seravitae]

Cheers guys, especially you vossy. That answered my question.