Simultaneous brew with Brewzilla's v3.1

[hoppyscotty]

Looking for a critique of my plan for this weekends brew. Planning a brew round my mates house this Saturday and decided on a big DIPA, however with his BZ 3.1 we're looking at a pretty low volume and this is to be split between 4 of us so looking to utilise my BZ too and split the mash between the two BZ's then combine the boil volume into one vessel to complete the brew. So aiming for a 28 or so pre boil volume. this way likely to get better mash efficiencies by splitting the batch and more volume.

The challenge is his electrics so cant run both vessels as normal so looking at running a figure of 8 recirculation with one vessel operating the 1900w element and the other the 500w element and alternating every 5 mins or so (500w usually can maintain mash temp but it will be very cold this weekend). Will probably wrap some additional insulation around the vessels too to reduce heat loss.

Ultimately aiming for a batch size of 26 litres into the fermenter assuming losses of around 7 litres to trub and a big dry hop (assuming 1 litre trub loss per 10 litres and 1 litre dry hop absorption loss per 100g of dry hops), so ending up with 18 - 19 litres in a keg.

What do you reckon...? Anyone done anything similar before.

 

[Caramel Ox]

If you are going to switch the elements every few minutes I wouldn’t be messing with the recirculation as well, as then the controller isn’t getting feedback. In fact I would be surprised if it didn’t work with just the 500w.

It’s going to be painful waiting for both to reach strike temperature?

 

[Twostage]

Is his supply particularly bad ?

 

[Rudy]

Look into reiterated mashing

 

[hoppyscotty]

Yes not thought about strike water heating. We’ll see I guess. Total water volume is 38 litres so I guess if you were running one of those Brewzilla extension collars you’d potentially have more volume than that. But with the figure of 8 recirculation hopefully I can maintain mash temp easy enough.

His supply isn’t poor but you can’t run more than 2900 w from a domestic supply.

Also thought about reiterated mash but looking to save some time.

 

[MashBag]

Fill from the hot tap

 

[MashBag]

His supply isn’t poor but you can’t run more than 2900 w from a domestic supply.

That is not absolute, it does depend on a few things.

 

[hoppyscotty]

Well I guess we could give it a go running the 1900w element on both units and look out for smoking plugs...

He live in quite a large house so hoping his downstairs circuit is split into two separate rings. Or maybe run an extension lead from an upstairs socket.

We'll get by even if we end up running two separate mashes or doing a reiterated mash. We've done a reiterated mash before a couple of times and though it fundamentally worked the didn't quite go to plan and it was very messy.

 

[Twostage]

That is not absolute, it does depend on a few things.

I happily use my 2.4kw kettle, 1.8kw toaster and 0.9kw microwave doing breakfast. Same ring (plugs next to each other).

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Use an upstairs kettle to boil water whilst downstairs bringing water to make sure you dough in at the correct temp.
Mash at 500w which is standard, sparge using kettle water.
Fill kettle carefully to 30 litres and watch boil like a hawk.
Adjust hops and bugu ratio liquor back if needed.
Insulation for bath vessels will help loads. I agree with you re the loss with grammes of hops. Difficult in the brew software to get it to recognise the big hop kettle and whirlpool dose of hops with the losses that occur.

 

[hoppyscotty]

I happily use my 2.4kw kettle, 1.8kw toaster and 0.9kw microwave doing breakfast. Same ring (plugs next to each other).

Yep but, I believe, there is a difference between devices that pull high power for short periods of time and reasonably high power constantly. In theory I believe you cant even draw a constant 13a from one device, but can happily run a kettle at 13a for a few mins to boil some water. I'm no electrician so dont know if this is true of domestic systems, but seems to be what alot of people think over on EV forums regarding charging cars from 13a sockets.

 

[hoppyscotty]

Use an upstairs kettle to boil water whilst downstairs bringing water to make sure you dough in at the correct temp.
Mash at 500w which is standard, sparge using kettle water.
Fill kettle carefully to 30 litres and watch boil like a hawk.
Adjust hops and bugu ratio liquor back if needed.
Insulation for bath vessels will help loads. I agree with you re the loss with grammes of hops. Difficult in the brew software to get it to recognise the big hop kettle and whirlpool dose of hops with the losses that occur.

All good suggestions thanks.

Yeah brewhouse losses has become really apparent to me since brewing on my larger 3v system where for big hoppy beers I'm losing 10+litres of beer through losses which is heart breaking, especially considering today's higher ingredients costs ...hence me trying to find ways to recover more beer as I'm documenting on another thread.

 

[AJA]

I happily use my 2.4kw kettle, 1.8kw toaster and 0.9kw microwave doing breakfast. Same ring (plugs next to each other).

Agree this will be fine, provided the ring has been wired correctly. 2.5mm cable can deal with 2 13A appliances.
A double socket probably can't though, and will get hot, so I would plug into separate outlets.
Also, this is a given, but don't run all in ones off of extension cables if you can help it (and deffo not the same one). The quality of wiring in these is woeful.

 

[MashBag]

I happily use my 2.4kw kettle, 1.8kw toaster and 0.9kw microwave doing breakfast. Same ring (plugs next to each other).

Absolutely and they are on for minutes not a protracted boil.

My previous "That is not absolute, it does depend on a few things." was meant that it could be higher or lower (depending).

 

[OliH]

As said I would just run the two Brewzillas off separate ring mains.
Each ring will be on a separate breaker of 32a and there will be no issue at all.

 

[OliH]

Correction…

Each ‘ring’ should be on at least a 16a breaker.

 

[hoppyscotty]

Well that worked out better than expected. My mate set up and ended up plugging both into the same double socket and it seemed to work fine with both elements on simultaneously so was pulling about 12.5a in theory continuously for a good 40 mins to heat the strike water with no breakers popping or plugs melting. Seems the stuff I’ve read about not pulling high amps continuously is not quite correct. Though it is a modern house so electrics would be well upto code.

Did struggle hitting gravity as I expected, always struggled with tbr Brewzilla to get much above 1.065 and target OG here was 1.080 so fell way short so added a healthy dose of Fame to make up gravity. But other than that went swimmingly!!!