Off the Cuff Brew Night

[Calum]

hi calum,
how do you find the 8.8kw burners? are they enough for a big batch?
i'm looking at putting something bigger together (keg conversion or very large stock pot) and wondered if these were up to it or if i'd need to go down the electric route with three kettle elements.
all the best

Hi bm

I have not attempted a larger batch yet but when I am trying to get around 32l litres to the boil it does it very quickly. I am confident that when I eventually move up to the double cornie brewlengths that 8.8kw should be sufficient.

From what I have read you have to be careful in attaching too many elements to the same domestic power ring as you can attempt to draw too much for the circuits to handle. I am already out of my depth with my electical chat but if you go through the Brewign Equipment threads you will get an idea of the challenges that you would have to be aware of.

I have the opposite problem is that it is like using a sledge hammer on a drawing pin. It isn't very subtle and even although the screw would make you think that you can achieve a degree of control in actuality you can either have "full" or "very nearly full".

[brewsters millionths]

hi calum,
yeah i know about the pwer rating. a 3kw element takes you to about max for a single socket so you need a separate socket for each element.
how long does it take you to get to boil?

[Calum]

My process goes something like this:

1, I batch sparge so I runoff the initial wort from the mash and then add my first sparge liquor - leave for 10 minutes and then runoff and then add my last batch of sparge liquor.

2, While waiting for the last batch I transfer the total collected so far to the ss boiler and fire it up. I have around 20 litres of wort at this point.

3, I collect the last batch and add this to the boiler with a total of around 32 litres of wort.

Using this process last night it took 45 minutes from the end of the mash to having all the wort collected and up to an extremely vigerous boil (only around 10 minutes from addition of the 2nd batch).

Compare this to when I used the electric boiler. It would take up to an hour to get to the boil after I had collected all the wort.