Hello everyone.
I thought it was time I manned up and joined the forum having been winging the homebrew life now for 18 months or so. I was actually looking for something completely different. but I just came across this thread so I thought I'd share my thoughts.
I've been brewing in my basic ACE tea urn for 18 months now, BIAB technique with some sort of cooling rack/cake stand I found to keep the bag about an inch off the bottom. I'd bought it from the Normanton ebay dude, as I live quite close, I went and collected it for �ã55. I took the old crappy tap off and fitted a proper ball valve hose connector on. I've probably done about 10 brews or so, and been happy with all of them (except brew no1 which we never ever talk about). I had a blanket of foil bubblewrap insulator stuff, that i'd wrap around it for the mash, and the temperature stayed fine.
I wrecked it last week (sad face), making my first pilsner. I think the crushed grain was quite floury and a lot sieved through the bag, and because I'd started with only 8 litre for a stepped mash there was a thick porridgy batter on the base/element that had sieved through. Not knowing this at the time, I turned the tea urn on, just to nudge it up a few degrees... and then smoke started billowing out, I guess the element had burned out. The rest of the brew evening was a disaster as I'd no way of boiling 20 litres in one vessel. So, trying to keep a boil on the go for 90 mins switching between 2 x 4 litre stock pots on the stove, a large saucepan and defunct tea urn is tricky business... ha. I'm hoping it'll still turn out ok.
Anyway, I thought i'd go buy a new tea urn, they're now �ã85! yikes. So i bought a big old stove pot for �ã40 instead, which I'll drill and fit the ball valve.
Summary:
For me, the ACE tea urn's main selling feature was, apart from the price, the thermostat, but in reality it's a bit inaccurate, so you kinda have to stand there with the real thermometer and turn it on/off manually. And the rolling boil I found to be far too ferocious, or when the thermostat kicked it, it'd go off completely. And, i think it's been mentioned before here, the top rim is a nightmare to clean.
What was awesome about the tea urn, is it's perfect size for a big colander i have that would rest on the top and the grain bag would fit in it. And it's also the perfect size for my stainless steel immersion wort cooler, i could drop the boil temp down to 24C in 10 mins.
I don't know if the newer ones / homebrew specific thermostats are any better, or if you can get a steady boil with them? but I did my first BIAB on the stove top and found it a lot easier to heat and maintain temperature, and a lot easier to clean. The only issue i have with the big pan is the wort cooler only sits in half the wort so i had to do a lot of swishing around.
I'll stop now, I've probably gone on too long. And, i only came on here to find some good (real) books to read.
cheers
Jon