Best Hotplate Locally

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Skymeat
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Best Hotplate Locally

Post by Skymeat »

I'm needing to setup for indoor runs this winter. I ran my still with an old hotplate a few years ago, but it was a PITA, though it worked great. Any feedback for a locally available hotplate that will fit a Miller 15.5G Keg in the US (Lowe's, Home Depot, restaurant supply)? I'm not in a place to put the element in the keg yet. I can run 240V though...

Also - I need this tomorrow :)


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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by Prairiepiss »

Good luck.

A hotplate won't work with a keg very well. The keg bottoms are domed. Hotplates need a flat bottom pan to work good. Then you have the whole cycling thing.

And where is local?
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by Skymeat »

Lowes/Homedepot is local. Or a restaurant supply. The domed bottom didn't matter very much in my first attempts. The edge of the keg sat on the hotplate surface, and the burner was very close, but not touching the keg bottom.
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by rad14701 »

Hot plates are intended for direct contact radiant heating only... That means a flat metal surface against a flat element...
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by vetting »

Like others have said, a hot plate just isnt going to work well not to mention the 4 hour heat up time. Why dont you want to do a heat element?

If you have access to 240, just get a controller from MuleKicker and a 4500 watt element. I have the same setup for a 15.5 keg and full boil take about a half hour.

Take the keg to a local welding place and have them cut a hole towards the bottom and have them weld on a SS fitting for the element. Do a search on the board here for the fitting you need.
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by The Baker »

vetting wrote:Like others have said, a hot plate just isnt going to work well not to mention the 4 hour heat up time. Why dont you want to do a heat element?

If you have access to 240, just get a controller from MuleKicker and a 4500 watt element. I have the same setup for a 15.5 keg and full boil take about a half hour.

Take the keg to a local welding place and have them cut a hole towards the bottom and have them weld on a SS fitting for the element. Do a search on the board here for the fitting you need.
And get a firm quote for the job.
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by Prairiepiss »

The Baker wrote:
vetting wrote:Like others have said, a hot plate just isnt going to work well not to mention the 4 hour heat up time. Why dont you want to do a heat element?

If you have access to 240, just get a controller from MuleKicker and a 4500 watt element. I have the same setup for a 15.5 keg and full boil take about a half hour.

Take the keg to a local welding place and have them cut a hole towards the bottom and have them weld on a SS fitting for the element. Do a search on the board here for the fitting you need.
And get a firm quote for the job.
God, some of these people have a high opinion of the value of their work!
Industrial standard. They need to pay the bills. And generally you get what you pay for. I will shut up now. :silent:
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by Coaster »

@ Skymeat,

Don’t want to beat a dead horse but a hot plate ain't gonna work to heat a 15.5 gallon beer keg. Because of the inefficiency of a hot plate it will take many hours for a hot plate to heat your Miller 15.5 gallon beer keg.

Like the others have previously suggested gonna and git a 220 volt electric water heater internal element for your Miller 15.5 gallon beer keg. Suggest ambling over to the Hillbilly Stills (http://www.hillbillystills.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow) and look at their ‘Heating Element Conversion Plate’ for mounting the water heater internal element in your Miller 15.5 gallon beer keg. If you use a 5500-watt water heater internal element it will take about 40 minutes to heat your Miller 15.5 gallon beer keg verse many hours for a hot plate to heat your Miller 15.5 gallon beer keg.

To control the water heater internal element suggest considering a PSR-25 based Phase Angle Controller. The ‘Heating Element Control’ thread in the ‘Related Hardware and Appurtenances’ Forum is rather extensive (29 pages) but in that thread there is information/diagram for a PSR-25 based Phase Angle Controller. The ‘Phase Angle Control modules’ thread in the ‘New distiller reading Lounge’ provides links for the parts to make a PSR-25 based Phase Angle Controller.

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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by Prairiepiss »

5 times. :lol:
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by dakotasnake »

it just cant be that cold in oregon. i run mine outside year round with propane and during the winter when its 10 or 20 below it still heats up in a half hr. just have ventilation in the shed and some hot coffee.
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by Skymeat »

Fair enough - I knew the best way to do it, I was on a short timeline for my plan this week. Free time is rare, so I must make the most of it.

The link for HillBilly was great! There's a lot more out there than when I built my still about 4-5 years ago.

I did buy a used hotplate - Same thing but an older model(http://www.google.com/products/catalog? ... JYBEPMCMAM), I've had it work for me before, so I'm not concerned about the warmup time, a little insulation goes a long way. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow, because I'll be stillin next to the computer. It's not super cold, but I'm geared up for freezing if I'm moving, standing mostly still in the carport just means I'm cold, bored and smoke twice as much.

I do want to get an electric element in the keg (new keg actually). I get them for about 30 bucks with a few small dents, so a small outlay. Again the flanges and plates from hillbilly make the whole thing way too easy. I'll just have it TIG'ed up at work when I get parts together.
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by astronomical »

Edit:Don't read this. Its negligent noob advice. At least some people disproved all my inaccurate assumptions. Except the last thing I said.. Your avatar does kickass.

That plate has a max wattage of 2000w and it has "thermo protection" whatever that is. Even with a non cycling, 2000w, internal element, you still couldn't drive a twelve gallon wash in a keg. The experts here can do the exact math but heat up time would be something like 10 hours or more for your external element. I doubt you'd have the power to drive a reflux column no matter how patient you are. You simply wont have enough power. You should call and cancel that order asap or get a suitable boiler. I run a nice flat bottom 7 gallon boiler on a 1500W element and I'm sure that with efficiency considered I'm putting more btu's in my wash than that 2000w will do with a keg. I'm not satisfied with my setup for a 5 gallon run. Id get that 200 back and buy a MK5500 from mulekicker (as someone else suggested). You're not going to be happy with it. Not trying to hate. I'm there now and my boiler isn't half that size.

Any hot plate with the power (~5KW) to drive a keg (with a modified bottom for efficiency) is going to cost a lot more than just building an electric boiler or paying someoen to build you one. You wont find any such industrial hotplate in any normal "local store"

BTW, awesome avatar :thumbup:
Last edited by astronomical on Wed Dec 07, 2011 1:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by Dnderhead »

"thermo protection" whatever that is."
it probably has a thermal fuse, its a fuse that blows if it gits to hot.they are in many things like coffee pots to prevent over heating if they run out of water/some one did not replace the pot etc.
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by Odin »

Apart from the construction of the kegg not being suited, it is the cycling a normal hot plate does that is also something you want to get around. On/off and thus disrupting a steady distillation process. I now have an power manager that allows me to lineary controll my 1,500 watts hot plate. But I am not using a beer kegg.

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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by KY1792 »

Without the use of math:

I will have to disagree with a few opinions and say that 2000 watts is not a buzzkill and will work in a limited way, first you do not need to fill the boiler to 15 gallons - 8 gallons would likely heat to strip in 2 hours. If you are refluxing then it will be more than ample. Using reflectix on the boiler and tower can save 30% on power.

As an example:
I used a 2500 watts stove top to bring my 6 gallon boiler to strip temperature in less than 2 hours, then an additional 3 hours to strip to 20%. Afterwards I used a 1000 watt hotplate to spirit run in reflux mode at about 900 watts, but after insulating only needed 600 watts for the same amount in the same time.

I did it this way because my rig was too tall to fit on the infinity controlled burner of my stove top when the reflux tower was attached but worked fine with the shorter stripping (pot) tower. I however bypassed the temp knob and thermal fuse and used an external controller.

I can also attest that prior to me finishing my phase angle controller I used my 5500 watt 240v internal element at 120 volts for 1300 watts to single run 6 gallons of 10% wash through my 4" flute inside of eight hours finishing at 80% without incident.

Now with math:

8 gallons x 8 pounds equals 65 lbs, going from 70F to 170F will need 6500 BTUs per hour or 1900 watts for a spirit run (2700 watts for a strip), now let this man have some fun.

Just remember my math is rudimentary at best and does not include the algorithms of gradual heat rise or Newtons law of ancillary cooling.
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by Odin »

2,500 Watts is defenately enough power. I think the problem is in heat transfer from hotplate to kegg. You need a flat bottomed boiler (no pin intended) to maximize heat transfer. Without that , you might destroy the hotplate and/or not get over enough heat at the right place. Only the rim of the kegg will be heated (again: no pin intended), and with RVS not having the best of heat conduction ...

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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by KY1792 »

By the gods,

No "pun" intended Odin - I did not see or take into account the false bottom of a hollow bottom keg, even so many hotplates are designed to run full power without a heatsink - albeit not as efficiently as I have purported but should still work with a bit more time (hence the thermal fuse).
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by Odin »

Thanks for improving on my English, KY!
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by KY1792 »

I saw where you are from and tried to correct succinctly - the 2 languages or so you bandy about beats the hell of a single utterance of what we call the queens english.
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by Odin »

Okay, and that means ...

Odin. :think:
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by The Baker »

Odin wrote:Okay, and that means ...

Odin. :think:
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Re: Best Hotplate Locally

Post by Odin »

Now that I do understand! Thanks Baker!

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