Electric Brew and International Relations

[moot]

I've noticed the British and the Aussies use electric kettles more than the Americans (I'm American). At least it seems like there is more of an emphasis on them on their homebrew sites. And even at a proffessional level there are a couple guys who make small eletric rigs for micros in Britain.

I saw a discussion on pro brewer where one guy trashed eletric and no one spoke up for it. What's the deal? Does it work? Is it slow, is it expensive? Is is because propane or natural gas is more expensive outside of the States? Is it because you guys are more patient and will wait for a boil?

Does anyone from across the pond have input?

I've also noticed more use of plastic not nearly as much stainless. Is this just perception? Is it the types of beers we're making.

Has anyone scorched their wort with an eletric kettle? Is that a myth? I like the idea of brewing indoors.

Moot

[Bugeater]

At the homebrew level, I think we generally don't bother with electric due to the much lower line voltage at our wall outlets than what you see in Europe. With a 120 volt line you generally can't draw more than 15 or 20 amps without blowing a circuit breaker. Electric elements that small take forever to boil water. With the 230 volt (or whatever it is there) circuits the current load is about half that.

Another factor is that so many of us Americans have enough room to build fires. There is something intrinsically more satisfying in seeing an open flame under the pot than in simply watching the thermometer rise after sticking a plug in the wall.

I do use a little electricity in my brewing. I use an electric heat stick in my hlt. It's slow but I don't have to keep a close eye on it while I do other stuff.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

[sbillings]

I use an electric boiler and I swear by it.

It is just a 2.4Kw element, in a polypropylene bucket, with a spigot and copper hop strainer.

I have never had wort scorch on me, nor have I ever heard of anyone using one of these, having scorching problems. As a matter of fact, the only time I've ever heard of the scorching issue being mentioned is from brewers who have never used an electric boiler advising people to avoid them.

[beer_bear]

I use an electric computer to play BN archives during my brew days. But use gas to do everything else.

[drewbage1847]

I agree with Bug, for most of us here, you really can't easily get enough juice to push a good boil.

I do use a heatstick to boost the power of my kitchen brewery so I can get a better boil faster.

I think there's also a factor that for most Amuricans brewing is an outdoor hobby. We already have propane grills, etc. So, doing a gas boil is a no brainer.

Plus, I think in general for a hobbyist there's just a certain level of safety with using gas. You can see the flame, can you see when that puddle of water next to the kettle is electrically hot?

That's not to say you can't make great beer with electricity! Just that it's not the norm here. (I guess that much of the concern about scorching with electrical elements comes from the days of people experiencing scorching with a RIMS)

[moot]

-sbillings- Is your element low density or just a normal high watt density water heater element? How much wort are you boiling with 2.4kw, what's your time to boil from mash temp?

This might show my ignorance of thermal conductivity and the like but I wonder if rims scorched because of the small amount of wort being heated at any given time. Maybe sometimes the rims chamber wasn't even full so the wort evaporated and scorched. In the kettle wort doesn't or is less likely to scorch because of the large mass for the heat to dissipate through.

Cool stuff.

[sbillings]

I hadn't thought about the lower voltage in the US being a problem. We are on 220V here. Would certainly explain why these things are not really used over there.

My element is a normal water heater element, like you might find in a kitchen kettle. I (and the previous owner of the boiler) actually used a 1.8Kw element for years, but when that one gave up the ghost, after many brews, I replaced it with my current 2.4Kw one.

I use it to heat my strike water, as well as maintaining 25l of wort, at a vigorous boil. I couldn't tell you off hand how fast it brings the wort to the boil.

Never used a rims set-up, but it certainly sounds plausible that the small amount of wort in contact with the element might scorch, where 25l of wort will not.

As to the safety concerns, I don't actually understand why this would be a worry. People use electric kettles in their kitchens, every day. This is just the same thing, on a larger scale. There are fuses and trip switches, which will kick in if there is a problem and I would have to be in physical contact with a conductive part of the boiler (which is made almost entirely out of polypropylene, an electrical insulator), or the hot wort (ouch), at the instant of there being a problem, in order to get a shock. You might just as well worry about high pressure gas near a naked flame.

[Caped Brewsader]

Most of the homebrew setups I have seen here in Belgium are with gas burners (usually natural gas). I have seen some electric ones but not as much as you see in the UK. I would say that almost everyone here brews indoors so propane is not an option. I brew in my garage on propane. I will be moving soon (just bought our first home!) and have a small brick garden house that will become the brewery. The small confined area worries me with propane so I have been thinking of switching over to electric. First I will convert my HLT and see how that goes (and do the boil with propane in the open air). If all is well, then I'll convert my boil kettle and setup a nice compact brewery indoors (it rains a lot here). It seems that with the current and the load electric could be a pain back in the US, but here you don't need to do anything special, just plug it in.