Home Distiller

So I learned a lesson, I need a backup heat source. In the middle of my 3rd run of the night, I ran outa gas. Good greef, this sucked cuz I actually thought my grill had gas and i could steal that bottle but nope. I ran to the dollar store and grabbed a $10 single countertop stove eye, paying no attention to watts. This thing won't boil water,, gah it's 750 watts and will barely get 10 gallons up to 160. I want to have heating options, so how many watts you electric guys getting away with??

divide your volts into your watts to get amps.take a 3500 watt electric water heating element divide that by 240 volts and ya come up with around 14.5 amps

I have an internal 5500 watt element in my 26 gallon boiler. I also use a 2000 watt hot plate to heat my 10 gallon mash tun. Both get the job done quick for the volume they can hold.

Yea I understand that, I was wondering about off the shelf hot plates. I just saw a 1000 watt but not sure that's enough. I don't want to use a water heater element in this rig. Is no one using hot plates? I will be building one with a large range eye tnite I suppose

MitchyBourbon wrote:I have an internal 5500 watt element in my 26 gallon boiler. I also use a 2000 watt hot plate to heat my 10 gallon mash fun. Both get the job done quick for the volume they can hold.

Yea, now that's more what I'm looking for

One thing to be careful about is weight. Not every hot plate can safely support the weight of 10 gallons of water plus a 25 lb pot. You will also need to have access to a 220 volt outlet with the right number of amps.

Yea I spent a lota time cutting a hole and mounting the hot plate under a folding steel chair so the pot actually sits in the chair not on the element. It looks cool even thou its not hot enuf. I call it the hot seat..

RumRunR wrote:Yea I spent a lota time cutting a hole and mounting the hot plate under a folding steel chair so the pot actually sits in the chair not on the element. It looks cool even thou its not hot enuf. I call it the hot seat..

The chair might be good for support, but probably acts as a heat sink if the pot is on it, making heating even harder.

It wasn't touching much of the chair, there mostly for my comfort of tipping over but I'm pretty sure the 10 gallons on top of it was the real heat sink. But that is something to look at when I fix it.

Well, if you insist on electric, I guess... Or you could go buy a 100 lb tank and not worry about running out for AWHILE!!

http://www.lowes.com/pd_28370-743-30395 ... facetInfo=" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

$136 at local SAMs, or $144 at Lowes. That's about 23.5 gallons, or almost 6 little ones. And the local U-Haul gives a discount the more you buy at one time. I can take the big tank and 3 little ones and get the price down near $3 per gallon as opposed to $4~5 at most other places.

That's certainly an option but I think before I go that far I'll plumb it into my natural gas.

Even before you go electric hot plate, consider the control; a bi-metallic on-off cycling type is not regarded as good enough for most stills.

When I ran gas, I always had 2 tanks. When one runs out, you switch to the spare. Always got the spare filled the next day.

I knew it was time to switch to electric when I ran out of both tanks in the same day.