Home Brew Equipment - Boiler & Hop Strainer

Our boiler is made from a six gallon plastic bucket that we picked up from our now defunct local home brew shop.  The bucket had been used for storing grain so was only a few quid.

The boiler is fitted with two Asda SmartPrice kettle elements, each costing about £5.  According to the hand book, the elements are 2.2kW.  Two of these will boil 25 litres of tap water in a little over 30 minutes, and one of them will hold a rolling boil after that.  

It appears that only cheap kettles have accessible elements these days.  Spend over £10 and you get a hidden/enclosed element which is no good here.Sub £5 kettles from Tesco and Argos are also suitable, although we know that the pins on a Wilkinson's cheap kettle are too short to take a 3-pin kettle lead.

The kettles came apart pretty easily, unfortunately we didn't take any photos of this process, but if you see a screw it's a fair bet it will need removing :) From the kettle we also kept the rubber grommit that forms the water tight seal between the inside and outside of the kettle (and now boiler).  

The elements each need a 38mm hole, in to which the rubber grommit snuggly fits.  The inside and outside parts of the element simply screw together either side of the bucket's wall, and it's pretty much done.

We also removed the switching mechanism (the lever and metal plate), but kept the boil dry plate and the LED power light.  This means that when the element is plugged in and power is supplied, the element is on - the LED giving a visual indication of this.  Note the element is actually mounted upside down to how it is in the kettle.  This is to provide clearance over the base of the bucket and the hop strainer (covered later).

This image shows one of the elements from the outside.  The other element is fitted on the opposite side of the bucket.  Some people mount their elements 120° apart, i.e. at 4 O'Clock and 8 O'Clock as this apparently gives a better rolling boil when both elements are on.  Given that one of these elements will give a good rolling boil to 30 litres of wort, our elements are mounted on opposite sides, 180° apart, i.e. at 3 O'Clock and 9 O'Clock.

The elements need three-pin kettle leads.  Each element draws around 10 amps, so the leads need to be rated to 13 amps, have 13 amp fuses in the plug and should be rated for high temperature.  These high temperature leads have a little notch taken out of the connector between the two top pins.  Our kitchen and downstairs are on separate ring mains, so each element is plugged in to a different ring main to reduce the load on a single ring.  We also have an RCD device for each plug.

Liquid and electricity really do not mix and coupled with large volumes of boiling liquid can create a very dangerous environment.  We would always strongly recommend you seek advice if you are unsure about any aspect of plumbing or electricals, and always take care when lifting any volume of hot liquids.

Unlike on our mash tun, the ball valve couldn't be mounted directly on to the bucket, so there's a tank connecter plus a 1/2" rubber washer on the inside of the bucket, with a plastic washer and the back nut on the outside.  The tank connecter required a 20mm hole to be drilled in the bucket. On to the tank connecter thread is a 1/2" tap connector from Wickes.  We fitted a short length of 15mm copper pipe via the compression fitting on the 1/2" ball valve from Screwfix (as used in the mash tun).  This 15mm pipe then pushes into the pushfit side of the tap connecter.  This rather convoluted approach is shown below.

 

The advatage of this valve set up is that it can be really quickly and easily taken apart for cleaning and storage, without having to remove the tank connector from the boiler.

The final part of the boiler is the hop strainer.  This acts as a filter to catch the hop debris after the boil and stops the debris entering the fermentation vessel (FV).  The filter stays in the boiler all the time.

The filter is a length of 21mm stainless steel braided wire, which is filled with 15mm lengths of 15mm copper pipe.  The braided wire is the same length as the internal circumference of the base of the bucket.  Either end of the wire then wraps over each side of a 15mm push fit copper tee, forming a circle.  This has proven to be a good fit, both in terms of the wire around the tee and the wire around the bottom of the boiler.  We initially had some jubilee clips to hold the wire, but they seemed unnecessary.  A final piece of 15mm pipe goes on to the remaining tee connector, and that then slots in to the tank connector on the inside of the boiler.

The hop filter is pretty good, but we still pass the wort through a normal kitchen sieve, just to catch the teeny-tiny bits that get through.  They would probably settle out in the FV, but we've never tried it without the sieve.  There isn't really that much in the sieve at the end of the transfer to the FV.

Cleaning the filter is a bit of a faff, but the braided wire simply pulls off the tee and the individual pieces of copper pipe fall out and can be rinsed.  The wire then needs rinsing and the bits of hops removing from the wire.

And here is the outside of the finished boiler, complete with a hand-crafted volume gauge.

We use this twin element boiler as our Hot Liquor Tun (HLT) as well, so use it to heat our initial mash water, top-up water and second batch water.  We also have a 4 gallon bucket with a single element, configured as above minus the strainer, which we use to reheat and hold the mash water for the second batch.


Just to reiterate, liquid and electricity really do not mix and coupled with large volumes of boiling liquid can create a very dangerous environment.  We would always strongly recommend you seek advice if you are unsure about any aspect of plumbing or electricals, and always take care when lifting any volume of hot liquids.


More pictures here.

Dave & Suki.