Brewing With 1 Element

[AJ_Rowley]

Hey guys,

Just a quick question for you. It's going to be a while before I can afford to get the shed wired for the brewery so I was thinking rather than have 2 extension leads coming from 2 circuits in the house would it be feasible to just use 1 Tesco element? Obviously I know getting up to boil will take considerably longer but would it make the brew day too long?

[delzep]

I get up to boiling with 2 elements, then turn one off for the 60 minute boil. No idea how much longer it will take to get to 100C on one element...depends on your boiler/insulation/ambient temperature etc.

[JD]

It will work with one element. The kettle should be well insulated and you'll benefit from a lid. Once the boil starts remove the lid for the remainder of the boil time to let the DMS boil off. The time it takes to get up to boiling temps depends on many factors, but the biggest factor is your wort volume. If you are brewing small batches, say 15 litres of wort, collecting maybe 10L-12L, you'll get there handy enough. Boiling 25L expecting to collect 21L will take considerably longer. It's hard to guess exactly because of many variables.

I'd give it a go boiling 25L of water as a test. It it's taking too long, reduce your batch size accordingly.

/J

[St. Fursey]

I do it all the time since one of my elements crapped out. I can do an all grain start to finish in under 5 hours including clean-up.
20-25l is my regular batch size

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[AJ_Rowley]

As usual guys great and timely advice. Cheers. I've just been doing 5l batches at the moment on my cooker but just looking to get the big one up and running.

[Taf]

Don't know your setup, but are you also heating your mash water in that boiler? If so, get it filled up prior to brewing, and get it set on a timer with a temp prope if you have one, or can get one. Regardless of what pot you use for mash water, good to have it ready waiting for you, as saves valueable time.

[irish_goat]

My kettle only has 1 element but my HLT has two. I might look into getting a hop filter for the HLT and then swapping their roles as the one I currently have in the kettle is too small for the HLT.

When you mash out you've already heated the wort up over half way so it's not too long of a wait to get the boil going in the kettle.