What piece of equipment has become invaluable that you wouldn’t expect?

[chrisb8]

You put it in a fermenter, you put it on an induction hob - boom, instant HLT / Boiler whatever.

On a 3k hob I get 2.9k of coupling with the flat bottomed fermenter, about 2.65k with one that has a slightly raised bottom.

Now for the crybabies : Can it burn the plastic? Nope, not unless it boiled dry. Is it easy to clean, yep. Is the fermenter foodsafe? Yes, it's polypropylene, the same as people put kettle elements in.

Do you use a normal cooker induction hob or one of the portable ones?

 

[Drunkula]

Do you use a normal cooker induction hob or one of the portable ones?

Portable. It means I can do everything in the shed without stripping all the paint off the walls in the house.

 

[chrisb8]

Portable. It means I can do everything in the shed without stripping all the paint off the walls in the house.

Do you have a link to the one you use?

 

[Drunkula]

Do you have a link to the one you use?

It's a Buffalo DF825. They're pricey new but I got mine on offer stupidly cheap from Nisbets clearance outlet on Ebay.

Initially they sent me the wrong unit which was a double ring cheapy job and I got it to work with the flat bottomed fermenter no problem, but with the one that has a raised bottom I'd have to move the lid into the right spot until it recognised it. Aldi had the Ambiano ones for about £30 a few weeks ago, if the one I'd got wasn't on offer I'd have got one of those. It would take longer to get to a boil but once you're there you're at a boil even 1500 watts causes too much boil off for my liking.

 

[chrisb8]

It's a Buffalo DF825. They're pricey new but I got mine on offer stupidly cheap from Nisbets clearance outlet on Ebay.

Initially they sent me the wrong unit which was a double ring cheapy job and I got it to work with the flat bottomed fermenter no problem, but with the one that has a raised bottom I'd have to move the lid into the right spot until it recognised it. Aldi had the Ambiano ones for about £30 a few weeks ago, if the one I'd got wasn't on offer I'd have got one of those. It would take longer to get to a boil but once you're there you're at a boil even 1500 watts causes too much boil off for my liking.

Cheers for the info
I keep toying with the idea of using an induction hob to help stabilise my mash temperatures

 

[OliH]

It's a Buffalo DF825. They're pricey new but I got mine on offer stupidly cheap from Nisbets clearance outlet on Ebay.

Initially they sent me the wrong unit which was a double ring cheapy job and I got it to work with the flat bottomed fermenter no problem, but with the one that has a raised bottom I'd have to move the lid into the right spot until it recognised it. Aldi had the Ambiano ones for about £30 a few weeks ago, if the one I'd got wasn't on offer I'd have got one of those. It would take longer to get to a boil but once you're there you're at a boil even 1500 watts causes too much boil off for my liking.

This is really interesting. Would the standard Young’s/ wilko fermentation buckets be ok to use, are they heat resistant enough? Or have I miss understood? Think I can get an induction job off the in-laws...

 

[Drunkula]

If you can find the recycling number on it and it's 5 or it has PP somewhere then that's what I use; it's polypropylene. You can use 2 which is HDPE but it goes a little softer but I'd still use it.

 

[OliH]

If you can find the recycling number on it and it's 5 or it has PP somewhere then that's what I use; it's polypropylene. You can use 2 which is HDPE but it goes a little softer but I'd still use it.

Cheers drunkula! I’ll check it out.
I know it’s not ideal but have you ever just done mash, boil and fermentation in the one vessel? Super lazy brewing!

 

[Drunkula]

I know it’s not ideal but have you ever just done mash, boil and fermentation in the one vessel?

Yep. Brew in a bag with the lid to heat the water, up the mash temp when it needed it and then do the boil. It means I could insulate the fermenter with foam and bungie cords and not have to change anything for the entire run.

I did try leaving the induciton on at 100 watts but it was actually raising the temperature. I'd love to be able to do some recirculation but I don't have a pump yet.

 

[Brew_DD2]

Yep. Brew in a bag with the lid to heat the water, up the mash temp when it needed it and then do the boil. It means I could insulate the fermenter with foam and bungie cords and not have to change anything for the entire run.

I did try leaving the induciton on at 100 watts but it was actually raising the temperature. I'd love to be able to do some recirculation but I don't have a pump yet.

This is exactly my kind of brewing. Minimal fuss and messing about on brewday. I do the same on my Peco boiler but the element will give out eventually, and I think I'll switch over to induction when it does.

 

[Drunkula]

Now what I do is slightly more 'complex'. Above the lid I've got a splatter guard for a frying pan (sticking with that theme) that I put above it and hold it up with the inner nut of the fermenter tap and even though I've got the brew bag this means I get better drainage - it's essentially a 79p false bottom and means there's a complete liquid zone at the bottom and when I do get a pump I'll have a pipe going into that then just pump it back to the top.

After the mash I've been doing a sort of vorlauf, then draining it fully, then doing the sparge into a second bucket. Then once all that's done I clear out the first one, pour the wort back in and do the boil.

I was going to put up a proper post about this on its own but thought I'd just sneak it in here because I'm a lazy sod. I was hoping for some backlash, too. Come at me, bro!

 

[Druncan]

What a brilliant thread!!! read it and felt inspired to re-think some of my brewing practices,,

I've got brewbuilder 75l conicals that I love https://www.brewbuilder.co.uk/14gal-std-conical-fermenter.html, they work fine, except when it gets too warm in the summer. They are single skin and I don't want faffing with a cooling coil. I was going to build a cooling system at some point. but then I resurrected an idea I had a while ago after reading through this thread.

In our bar I use ACask 50l keg cooling jackets https://www.acask.com/shop/keg-cooling-jackets/piped-cooling-jacket-50-litre/ with my glycol sub zero cooler. It chills my 30l steel kegs from Fyne Ales. (Jarl and West Lager) with a bit circle of kingspan insulation underneath.

I have just tried the jackets on my FV's and THEY FIT PERFECTLY - even fastening around the temp probe socket and blow off t/c

Now, I just need a thermal valve? to switch the coolant to circulate and cool the F/V.

Anyone know of such a product?

 

[Brew_DD2]

Now what I do is slightly more 'complex'. Above the lid I've got a splatter guard for a frying pan (sticking with that theme) that I put above it and hold it up with the inner nut of the fermenter tap and even though I've got the brew bag this means I get better drainage - it's essentially a 79p false bottom and means there's a complete liquid zone at the bottom and when I do get a pump I'll have a pipe going into that then just pump it back to the top.

After the mash I've been doing a sort of vorlauf, then draining it fully, then doing the sparge into a second bucket. Then once all that's done I clear out the first one, pour the wort back in and do the boil.

I was going to put up a proper post about this on its own but thought I'd just sneak it in here because I'm a lazy sod. I was hoping for some backlash, too. Come at me, bro!

Reckon this would do the job?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/372873062846

 

[strange-steve]

Zero sign of it so far. I'm getting a very slight mineral build up that I just rub off with a scrubby pad. And I've been heating the mash, too, where the sugar density would be of course much higher. I think the surface area of the lid is far, far more than a low density heating element.

Before using that lid I was using a stainless dish from the pound shop, a real super flimsy one and I had to weigh it down a bit because it would move about. I wondered if I could improve the coupling using two lids together but the coupling went down, not up. And I used a steamer - the kind that stack and are part of a saucepan set- that worked really well, too, but of course you've basically got a saucepan in there at that point and I didn't want the handles to rub the sides of the fermenter, that's why I settled on that lid. It's absolutely pefect.

Basically you can turn any fermenter into a big old boil kettle for a quid and you don't have to go cutting no holes for elements and eletromecuting yourself AND I can completely cover the fermenter in insulation with bungee cords and it won't catch fire... like maybe it did when I used to do my 'bain marie' thing on the gas cooker.

This is rather ingenious

 

[Drunkula]

Reckon this would do the job?

Yeah, it looks about 5 times thicker than the super thin plate I was using. Possibly even thicker than the pan lid.

 

[Brew_DD2]

Yeah, it looks about 5 times thicker than the super thin plate I was using. Possibly even thicker than the pan lid.

Cool, cheers. Does it need to be completely flat, or is the proximity to the induction hob enough?

 

[Drunkula]

Does it need to be completely flat

No. The lid I use is curved. That's sort of a good thing because it means you've got the surface area underneath easily reached so you're doubling the available area. The completely flat crappy dish still worked, though.

I also use a standard wok on it which is really curved and I get crazy heat out of it, real wok-hei. You can see a ring where it heats up most and because of the curve that's over half a centimetre from the surface. Even on 2000 watts it's crazy hotter than on the big cooker gas ring full blast. The char I get on noodles and onions makes it taste exactly like the take-away and meat is like it's been barbequed. I do this in the shed so I don't stink the house out.

 

[Spinningwoman]

I would miss my range cooker now, especially the ring for the wok burner.... Invaluable for the boil!
Never thought I would say I would ever miss the cooker.

For some reason I can’t get a boil on my wok burner on the range cooker - it’s supposed to be 3.7 but I do better on the big normal burner which is supposed to be 3.0, overlapping a bit onto the small burner behind it for extra help.

 

[Spinningwoman]

Zero sign of it so far. I'm getting a very slight mineral build up that I just rub off with a scrubby pad. And I've been heating the mash, too, where the sugar density would be of course much higher. I think the surface area of the lid is far, far more than a low density heating element.

Before using that lid I was using a stainless dish from the pound shop, a real super flimsy one and I had to weigh it down a bit because it would move about. I wondered if I could improve the coupling using two lids together but the coupling went down, not up. And I used a steamer - the kind that stack and are part of a saucepan set- that worked really well, too, but of course you've basically got a saucepan in there at that point and I didn't want the handles to rub the sides of the fermenter, that's why I settled on that lid. It's absolutely pefect.

Basically you can turn any fermenter into a big old boil kettle for a quid and you don't have to go cutting no holes for elements and eletromecuting yourself AND I can completely cover the fermenter in insulation with bungee cords and it won't catch fire... like maybe it did when I used to do my 'bain marie' thing on the gas cooker.

This is bizarre - I’ve no experience of induction hobs and I’ve never seen anything like this idea suggested anywhere before! So could I do the same in a SS but not magnetic brew pot?

 

[Drunkula]

I’ve never seen anything like this idea suggested anywhere before! So could I do the same in a SS but not magnetic brew pot?

I joked about revolutionising the world of brewing about a month ago but was too lazy to tell the world.

@Spinningwoman Just tested the metal lid inside and aluminium pan and it doesn't work, also tried one of the crappy lids inside a steel pot that's not ferromagnetic and that also didn't work. Both give E0 unsupported cookware errors. I'm not saying it's out of the question because a lot of cookware has an embedded plate of inductive metal in the base.