Keeping brewing liquor hot overnight

stickyfinger · Joined: 04 May 2014 Posts: 176 Location: hudson valley, NY

Let's say I want to set up my HLT and MLT one night and get them warming up to brew temp and then just get up and mash in right away. How much of the time will by HLT element probably have to fire to keep my MLT and HLT at temp while I am sleeping? I estimated that it would cost around $3.30 extra per brew to keep my water warm overnight:

5500 watt element, 8 hours I sleep, estimated 50% of the time it willl be running to maintain temp (might be high?), divide by 1000 for kWH and then it's around 15 cents / KWh for me, so that is $3.30. I am thinking that maybe 25% or less is more accurate to maintain temps though, which is around $1.15. Have to add in the pumps energy cost though too.

That would give me a jump of 90 minutes on my brew day when needed.

**kal** · Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2016 4:11 am Post subject:

While it depends on ambient factors, I would suspect the element would run considerably less than 50% of the time.

I did a brew a while back that I wanted to get started and finished early (it was a big RIS so lots of strike/sparge water) so I heated both MLT and HLT the night before to strike temp then turned everything off and threw a couple of towels over the kettles. ~8 hours later it was only down 10 degrees or so (I forget the actual drop but it was surprisingly low). Just putting some towels on top of the kettles did wonders.

I turned everything on in the morning and after only a few minutes of recirculating I had made up for the drop in temp and was mashing in. That to me made more sense than running elements/pumps all night but YMMV of course.

Good luck!

Kal

stickyfinger · Joined: 04 May 2014 Posts: 176 Location: hudson valley, NY

Excellent idea! Then, I don't have to worry about pumps seizing or other problems too. I'll try it the next time I want to speed up brewday!

**kal** · Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2016 3:29 pm Post subject:

Yup! While I've never had any issues with mine, the idea of leaving any brewing setup running overnight unattended with the heating element running too is not something I'd recommend.

Kal

itsnotrequired · Joined: 15 Sep 2015 Posts: 177 Location: central wi

i'd never thought of doing this before but tried it out this last weekend. my normal brew routine is to fill the hlt the night before with water from my ro/di filter. then i wake up around 5 am on brew day, fire up the hlt and then putz around for the 45 minutes or so it takes for the water to get up to temp. this time, i heated up the water a bit the night before. i didn't hook up any hoses or do any recirc, i just let the element run for a while and checked the temp manually with a thermapen. once it hit 150 i turned everything off and covered with a thicker blanket. next morning, the water had only dropped to 140 or so and took only about 15 minutes to get up to temp. shaved a good half hour off my brew day, definitely something i will be adding into my normal routine.

wscottcross · Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2016 4:22 pm Post subject:

The only consideration I would add is that if you are not using the elements with the stainless base, they can start to rust if left submerged overnight. I had it happen on my setup before I switched to the stainless base elements.

**kal** · Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2016 9:14 pm Post subject:

Definitely don't use standard iron based heating elements if leaving water in that long. I recommend these ones:

http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/stainless-steel-heating-elements

Kal