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Electric Brewing
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Home electric breweries have become very popular. I guess the early adopters to all electric small scale and home breweries were the folks at SABCO, also known as www.brewmagic.com. And if you want to purchase a full scale, ready to go, out of the box system then SABCO is still the "go to" system.
But you don't have to go all in to go electric, instead you can start small. Some homebrewers only convert their boil to electric while others only convert their mash to electric. Also many homebrewers enjoy building their own systems.
We don't offer complete full scale, ready to go electric beer brewing systems. Instead we design & develop quality, relatively low cost brew controllers, then we leave the mechanical design & plumbing up to you. We are brewers ourselves and we understand that each brew rig is a expression of the owner's personality, brew requirements and budget constraints. |
Comparison to Propane
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First off, a heat source is a heat source and one source does not produce a better heat quality than another. But as far as heat sources go, electric is far more efficient and far less costly than propane. Propane will heat faster than any 120V electric system but a good 240V electric system will out perform a "run of the mill" propane system at less than 1/5 the operating cost. Any brew system designed for propane can be converted to electric and if done correctly, scorching will not be any more an issue than it would be with a propane setup. The trick to minimize scorching is to use only low watt density or ultra low watt density heating elements. |
Electric Brewery Stages
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Stove Top Boost Heater - The least costly way to get into electric brewing is to boost your electric stove top with a plug-in 120V element. The element can be
mounted through the side of your brew pot or
hung over the side of your brew pot. Some brewers call the element style that hangs over the side of your brew pot a heat stick. A stove top boost heater reduces your time to boil by about half, plus you can now brew up to 10 gallons on your stove top.
120V Electric Boil - The next step up in cost and complexity is to brew with two 120V elements. The advantage to brewing this way is there is no need to run new power anywhere in the house. All home kitchens built since the early 1970s have two separate outlet circuits on two separate breakers and as long as you plug one of your two 120V heaters into each circuit you will be able to run two 1650 watt elements at the same time. One element will be plugged directly into the wall while the other element needs to be run through a
120V electric brew pot controller so that you can adjust your rate of boil.
240V Electric Boil - Moving from 120V to 240V at least doubles your available wattage and may multiply your wattage by 4. And unless you are lucky enough to have a unused dryer outlet available you will need to pay an electrician to run a 240V 30 Amp circuit to your brew area. Also, because of the watts involved
an electric brew controller is necessary. Just like a 120V setup, your brew elements can be
inserted through the side or
hung over the side of your brew pot.
Electric Mash Control - With an electric mash system you have very precise control over your mash temperaure, but to gain this much control you have to run
a PID based mash temperature controller.
All-in-one Control - This is nothing more than boil control and mash control all in one housing. All of the fancy brew panels you see on the net are all in one type systems. |
Electric Brewery
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