I want to brew in my basement and I was wondering if anyone knows of any good electric burners or other alternatives. All I can find is propane burners or really insufficient electric ones. Im hoping to stay away from a full size stove.
all electric burners of the same wattage are the same efficiency. 100% of the electricity converts to heat. the amount of possible heat is solely a matter of of the wattage of the electric element. a "good" stove element depends on the the other stuff. a weak element would eventually burn out, like a toaster. but i don't think this is much of a problem with stove elements. they tend to last for a long time. a plug in 120 volt stove top will max out at 1500 watts. you won't be boiling 5 gallons with that. if you have the available capacity on two circuits you may be able to use a 1500 watt stove on one circuit and a heat stick on another circuit. if you can hardwire 240 volt you can greatly increase heat ouput. but then you would just as well use a full stove which is not the point. Cheers.
Thanks for the info. I have a 240 v circuit in the basement. How many watts would I need for 5 gallon batches?
If you have 240V circuit in place, you can use a 4500 Watt water heater element. Cheap and available at any hardware store. The problem you will have is control. This wattage may boil the wort down to a higher gravity than you want.
A possibility, with some reservations. Judge for yourself. (Reservations being it takes a little patience to boil 6 gallons, heating element thermostat tends to fail with heavy use, but replacement element is pretty inexpensive. It's also easy, and safe to rewire around the thermostat and use as a 1650W heatstick) http://www.amazon.com/Cajun-Injecto...3KQ4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336476702&sr=8-1
You'll have no trouble boiling anything on any stove with the assitance of one of these: http://www.3d0g.net/brewing/heatstick I didn't build my own, not electrically inclined, but bought one from a homebrew store. It gets a 6.5 gallon batch up to a boil in no time at all.
I have a couple of 3 kW stainless steel Burco boilers, but of course we are on 230 volts here so it's a pretty routine power rating.They cope well with 6 UK gallon brews and could perhaps manage a little more but these things do limit the brew size.
An induction cooktop will give you great heat control, but you'll need to be sure your kettles are ferromagnetic (i.e. a magnet will stick to them).
You can use a heatstick or two as a fairly easy way to get extra heat into your wort and bring it to a boil. Just make sure you are GFCI wired in the basement. The other aspect to consider is ventilation - although you don't need to worry about propane fumes, you still have to worry about condensation. Kal's brewery, which has been linked, is the Lamborghini of electric breweries, but has some good best-practice advice for setting up the space.
