Advice on building an HLT

[Deebee]

Due to us likely moving house i shall son be getting a much better room in which to brew. it will be away from the rest of the house meaning that i will not have access to the kitchen stove.

At present i use the kitchen stove to heat mash and sparge water.

Theoretically i could still use the stove for the mash water and carry the Mt to the brewing room afterwards.

however heating the sparge water is a different matter. I am thinking of trying to find an appropriate Fv in Norway that i can convert to an HLT via use of a tap and a kettle element. it can in theory also function as a boiler should i decide to make a larger batch.

My question is that regarding temperature control by using a kettle element. At present i can adjust the stove so that i maintain a certain heat, in the proposed HLT this is not going to be possible.

Is there anyway this can be done ( simply please) or is it just a matter of watching a thermometer so that i don't heat too much.

If i just use the vessel as an MLT then how low should i set the tap and element. i normally need to warm around 22-23 litre water for sparging. I guess i can in theory use water from the hot water system and then just use the HLT to warm it the rest of the way right?

Thaks for the help. The proper home brewery looks as though it may be in site!

[Naich]

I can't speak authoritatively on this, as I'm still building the kit for my first AG brew, but the two ways to do this would seem to be either using a thermostat like this one or by varying the power with a power controller like this. I'm doing both, the idea being that I can regulate the temperature for sparging with the thermostat and get the right amount of rolling boil with the power controller.

As for getting water from the hot water supply - not a good idea unless you have a water heater that is fed directly from the mains.

[Horden Hillbilly]

I made a simple hlt from a fv, boiler tap, element & thermostat. You can see a pic of it here. I would not use this as a boiler though as the sides can become squidgy at higher temperatures.