How much do you think you use in electicity costs

Make grain beers with the absolute minimum of equipment. Discuss here.
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userBeer

How much do you think you use in electicity costs

Post by userBeer » Wed May 04, 2011 11:26 am

Say you had a 30ltr URN so you have to mash for about 1/1.5hour at maybe 60deg and the boil for an hour at 90-100deg etc..

I wonder how much this costs on elec, any idea?

I think an URN looks the way to go, when finsihing boiling the hops i suppose to could get a chiller coil to fit the URN as well, nice solution really, how about sparging the mash?

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Re: How much do you think you use in electicity costs

Post by Beer O'Clock » Wed May 04, 2011 11:38 am

I use a 40 litre Urn. Regular 90 min boils.

To answer your question, not so much as to worry about.
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Re: How much do you think you use in electicity costs

Post by Kev888 » Wed May 04, 2011 1:58 pm

My electricity costs are about 1.5p per pint. Though thats with larger batches, with a standard sized brew it could start heading for almost 2p..

Its also with three-tier - but I don't think BIAB would be much different, at least not enough that I'd lose any sleep over calculating it..

Cheers
Kev
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userBeer

Re: How much do you think you use in electicity costs

Post by userBeer » Wed May 04, 2011 2:07 pm

I guessed about £2 a brew so 80p would be good. It's hard to believe you can make good beer for so cheap. I'm guessing you could make a pint for 25-40p?

What do think of this boiler, looks good and has thermostat.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NEW-ACE-30ltr-Wat ... 33673d9ca1

How much does your grain displace the liquid. I think you need about 5kg of grain for a 23L brew? So for a 30lL boiler, i would be looking about 18L of liquid at a guess and then i could sparge another 5litres after empyting at the end of the first mash.?

jason123

Re: How much do you think you use in electicity costs

Post by jason123 » Sat May 14, 2011 10:29 am

Do a brew when nobody else is at home and take before and after readings from your meter. Not totally accurate as your fridge freezer and anything else will use up some lecky but you would have total figure. You could then do the same without a brew going on and deduct that figure from the the brew total.
Then get you lecky bill out and see how much the thieving b*st*rds charge you per unit, multiply that by the lecky used and there's your cost.
Using a 3KW heater at 6p per KW and 90min boil would cost you 27p Heating water for mash etc I imagine wouldn't be far off the same.
So Kev's brew figure of 1.5p is a pretty good rule of thumb I'd say. With good insulation around your mash tun and boiler etc, I doubt the size of the brew would make much difference, so 2p would be a top end figure and if you use that for calculations you'll never be far off the mark.

mysterio

Re: How much do you think you use in electicity costs

Post by mysterio » Sat May 14, 2011 12:56 pm

Kev888 wrote:My electricity costs are about 1.5p per pint. Though thats with larger batches, with a standard sized brew it could start heading for almost 2p..

Its also with three-tier - but I don't think BIAB would be much different, at least not enough that I'd lose any sleep over calculating it..

Cheers
Kev
Why is it cheaper for a larger batch ? :?

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Re: How much do you think you use in electicity costs

Post by Kev888 » Sat May 14, 2011 1:09 pm

The heating times multiply but the boil time stays the same, and I haven't needed to increase the size of my element to still get a rolling boil during that time, so for that 90mins I get twice the boiled wort for the same energy costs.

I guess this is partly because my 3kw element could be smaller for smaller batches but also partly because larger boilers tend to be (proportionally) more efficient, all else being equal. The surface area of the boiler (which is related to the heat losses) doesn't increase proportionally to its volume (its a squared vs cubed thing). So if you're prepared to wait twice as long to heat it then the element power doesn't need to double with a doubling of volume.

Its offset a bit though by the longer heating times, during this period there is time for more losses; ideally I'd double the power during heating but return to the same power for maintaining the boil, but the difference in cost is so small that it doesn't seem worth the effort. The difference in time may be a different story though..

Cheers
kev
Kev

mysterio

Re: How much do you think you use in electicity costs

Post by mysterio » Sat May 14, 2011 1:21 pm

OK. So basically you're giving it a less powerful boil (per L of wort) with the larger batch.

jason123

Re: How much do you think you use in electicity costs

Post by jason123 » Sat May 14, 2011 1:58 pm

mysterio wrote:OK. So basically you're giving it a less powerful boil (per L of wort) with the larger batch.
Thats about the size of it. More litres of wort per 3Kw.

As kev said the surface area of the vessel is proportionally smaller per litre for a larger vessel. However good insulation on a small vessel would go a long way to offsetting those losses due to a larger surface area per litre in a smaller vessel, possibly to the point where you would be find it difficult to identify a drop in performance.

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Re: How much do you think you use in electicity costs

Post by Kev888 » Sat May 14, 2011 2:30 pm

mysterio wrote:OK. So basically you're giving it a less powerful boil (per L of wort) with the larger batch.
Well to a degree yes, and especially because I have no power control on the element, but not as much as you may imagine because (unlike heating time) the heat losses aren't directly proportional to batch size - when I double the batch I'm not getting a boil of half the vigor, and its this that lets me boil 90L with one element.

Its all fairly academic at our sort of volumes, though - a few pence or minutes per litre so hardly worth worrying about, and as jason said a bit more insulation makes up the difference easily enough in any case.

Cheers
Kev
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Re: How much do you think you use in electicity costs

Post by vacant » Sat May 14, 2011 5:11 pm

I reckon the electricity saved from a shorter boil is exactly offset by the value of the extra hops needed to give the same bitterness. Therefore I suspect electricity and hop prices are both controlled by the illuminati :evil:
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Re: How much do you think you use in electicity costs

Post by testtube » Sat May 14, 2011 8:25 pm

Your electric is per KW/Hr i.e. a 3 KW element for an hour is 3KW/Hr's on your meter. Think you might find 6p / KW/Hr is a bit cheap, I'm on economy 7 it's 19p for first 75 units/month then 9p after that during the day, 4p at night (for the storage heaters), doesn't get much cheaper than that. As for thermal loss, your really looking for 8-10%/hour loss on your boil, bigger brew length you will need more thermal capacity, whether your putting it in or stopping coming out. As for a shorter boil if your boil isn't vigorous enough your clarity, stability etc. will suffer i.e. not a good hot break. And don't forget water if your on a water meter.

I would save money by using a better wash powder at a lower temp, buy a woolly jumper and a dishwasher as this is more economical, gives you more time to brew and sterilises bottles en stuff! \:D/

i_am_ed

Re: How much do you think you use in electicity costs

Post by i_am_ed » Wed Sep 21, 2011 3:06 pm

For comparison I use 48p worth of gas for a 5 gallon brew with a 90 minute boil. The pot is sat across two gas hobs on the kitchen cooker which gives a fairly vigorous rolling boil. One hob on its own is a bit weak. Not much in it really!

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