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  • Any electric brewers in the house?

    I'm looking to build out a 5 or 7bbl brewhouse. The way I see it, electric has a lot of advantages over gas: no make up air needed, no venting for CO, no open flame heating the air (less strain on air conditioning), no need for fire suppression, programmable so I can set the HLT the night before.

    I hear a lot of gas brewers saying very vehemently to stay away from it, but I don't hear a lot of good reasons. Mostly I hear "it'll be too expensive." I did some spreadsheeting using the industry standards found here, and for a 7bbl batch, electric power comes out about $2 more expensive per batch. So cost isn't really an issue, unless those "industry standards" are way off.

    I have a hypothesis that most of these brewers have never used an electric system, so I'd love to hear from anyone using an electric brewhouse in this size. How do you like your system? Do you wish you'd gone gas instead?

  • #2
    Did you consider demand charges? If your electrical connection can deliver more them 25kW you will have demand meter.

    Also electric elements are bear to clean. And you will have to clean them.

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    • #3
      Currently on a 3.5bbl electric system. Great advantages, as you stated, but Thirsty also has some great points. A huge chunk of our electric bill is a peak demand charge. We get the first 5kw included in our base bill, but every kw after that is pretty expensive.

      Also, ensuring the elements are clean is a big deal.

      If you have any specific questions about electric systems, feel free to PM me.

      Steve

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Thirsty_Monk View Post
        Did you consider demand charges? If your electrical connection can deliver more them 25kW you will have demand meter.
        Also electric elements are bear to clean. And you will have to clean them.
        Thanks TM. No, I didn't consider demand charges. I will ask about that when I call my electric company today.

        Yes, I'm quite familiar with scrubbing elements. I do it every brewday on my 11000watt system at home.

        How big is your electric brewhouse?

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        • #5
          Any thoughts on a Kai-style The Electric Brewery rig? Thinking of building a "giant homebrew" 2bbl system from his instructions and dual 4500w elements in the kettle and HLT to allow back-to-back batching. His control panel and process make me think it's the best way to go.

          Thanks,
          Jason

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          • #6
            I am running a very similar rig at home already, with 5500 watt elements in 25 gallon kettles. I absolutely love it, but I'm here on Probrewer to find out how it scales up to production sizes. I was hoping maybe someone had installed one of the 5 or 7bbl electric systems from Stout (or something similar) and had some feedback.

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            • #7
              16,500 watt; 3 element; 3 phase; 1.5bbl kettle...

              We have 3 phase in the building so we built a 3-5500w 55gal SS drum kettle brewery with a 35 gallon mash tun. I have enough power (200 amps at 3phase) that I could 'possibly' run 4 units simultaneously for a 6bbl one man brewery. I like the automated control I can achieve from the electric setup. I have an arduino controller controlling pump and PID heat cycle that can be programmed in at the start for step mashes.

              The big advantage starting out- no venting and no need for propane (no natural gas where we are at in the woods). A lot less issues with fire marshall too.

              I haven't 'officially' used it to find out how it works in production mode- but time will tell.

              I think electric is probably good up to 5-7 bbl with 3 phase power (wild assed guess with my limited experience). After that it seems steam is the way to go. Of course, I hope to grow to steam down the road. A friend just bought a 600gal still and boiler to match and it ran him as much for the boiler as for the still.

              Higher Ground Brewing in Hamilton, Mt has a 5bbl (I think that is right) brewery that is electric with an insulated mash tun and instant hot water heater. They use a single massive heating element.
              JC McDowell
              Bandit Brewing Co.- 3bbl brewery and growing
              Darby, MT- population 700
              OPENED Black Friday 2014!

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              • #8
                Originally posted by ManSkirtBrew View Post
                Thanks TM. No, I didn't consider demand charges. I will ask about that when I call my electric company today.

                Yes, I'm quite familiar with scrubbing elements. I do it every brewday on my 11000watt system at home.

                How big is your electric brewhouse?
                I have 5.5 BBL brew house. If you wire it for 3 phase that would help you with demand. You do not need any elaborate controls for your BK. just turn elements on and off.

                Let me know if you have more questions.

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                • #9
                  PICTURES OF 5.5 BBL Electric Brewery?

                  Thirsty Monk- do you have some pictures or a description of your system. I'd like to see how to grow the electric brewery.

                  Are you using Plastic conicals? How do you have them setup for fermentation? Again a picture is worth a thousand words. Thanks.

                  Here's the basis of my 1.5bbl:
                  Click image for larger version

Name:	Bandit Brewery.jpg
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                  JC McDowell
                  Bandit Brewing Co.- 3bbl brewery and growing
                  Darby, MT- population 700
                  OPENED Black Friday 2014!

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Any electric brewers in the house?

                    Originally posted by jcmcdowell View Post
                    Thirsty Monk- do you have some pictures or a description of your system. I'd like to see how to grow the electric brewery.

                    Are you using Plastic conicals? How do you have them setup for fermentation? Again a picture is worth a thousand words. Thanks.

                    Here's the basis of my 1.5bbl:
                    [ATTACH]18398[/ATTACH]
                    Picture of brew house.

                    [url]https://www.dropbox.com/s/5nsap4r0gnxmay5/IMG_0109.JPG

                    Picture of control box.
                    [url]https://www.dropbox.com/s/s1hma8jtdyqzhrz/IMG_0107.JPG

                    After couple of years this is my opinion.
                    I think that electric HLT is great.
                    Electric BC is pain but I live with it.
                    Direct fire is a better cheap option for BK.

                    And do not forget CIP.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      heating elements

                      We have a 7bbl brew house and use electric. And I wouldn't change anything. We use 27000 watts to bring it to a boil and it works great. After each brew we spray the kettle and elements down with a hose. which mostly gets them clean. Then we fill the kettle with hot water and pbw until the elements are covered and let them soak. We primarily do this to circulate the water through the plate chiller. but it cleans both. We have 6 4500 elements that we heat with. We do replace them about every 25 brews or so. We probably wouldn't have to but we like to. We use standard cheap commonly accessible camco heating elements so replacing them isn't hard. Cleaning really doesn't require any additional effort beyond that which cleaning any other kettle would require.

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                      • #12
                        Originally posted by is_wiz View Post
                        We have a 7bbl brew house and use electric. We use 27000 watts to bring it to a boil and it works great. We have 6 4500 elements that we heat with.
                        Oh, interesting. Stout's 7bbl system has 4, 15000 watt elements in both the HLT and BK. So they're using 60kW just for the boil. You think that's massive overkill?

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                        • #13
                          Originally posted by ManSkirtBrew View Post
                          Oh, interesting. Stout's 7bbl system has 4, 15000 watt elements in both the HLT and BK. So they're using 60kW just for the boil. You think that's massive overkill?
                          Overkill. We use three of the brewmation 15kw elements in our 9bbl system.

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                          • #14
                            9bbl! That's the biggest electric system I've heard of. How long have you been using it? Impressions? Do you like it?

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                            • #15
                              Originally posted by ManSkirtBrew View Post
                              9bbl! That's the biggest electric system I've heard of. How long have you been using it? Impressions? Do you like it?
                              It's great. Been using it since January. Would never want to anything larger than this with electric, but for us it's perfect.

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