This assessment is by Homebrew Finds Contributor Brad Probert. Brad is an engineer, knowledgeable homebrewer and skilled reviewer. Seize a hyperlink to Brad’s web site on the finish of this assessment.
Wort Hog 120V eBIAB System
In the case of electrical Brew In A Bag (eBIAB) programs, there are a number of selections on the market. I’ve tried each 240 Volt and 120 Volt programs. Whereas I like the velocity of heating water/wort on the 240V programs, I don’t love the constraints/expense of wiring a 240V plug in a handy place. The 1500 Watt and 1600 Watt eBIAB models on the market are good, however they do lack in the case of velocity of heating strike water or getting a extremely vigorous boil. The Wort Hog 120V system slides into this area of interest with the comfort of a 120V system, however utilizing a 2250W Blichmann heating factor to offer a notable increase.
Test Present Fashions, Value, Specs & Availability, Evaluate Continues Beneath
System Overview
The Wort Hog Flip Key System through Excessive Gravity Fermentations Provides makes use of a Bayou Traditional 11-gallon kettle. I’d by no means seen a Bayou Traditional kettle in particular person earlier than, and I’ll admit I had a pre-conceived opinion of them. I considered them as “low-cost turkey fryers” primarily based on their low value and advertising and marketing, however I discovered my baseless opinion was fully off. This 11-gallon kettle has an excellent shiny, polished exterior, however most significantly it was product of a really strong thick gauge stainless-steel. With top quality, clear welds, this child is actually going to reside as much as put on and tear for a very long time, and cleaned up very simply.
The warmth is delivered through the Blichmann Boil Coil, with the aforementioned 2250W factor. This coils round in a spiral sample to create a double stack of the heating factor round a lot of the internal circumference of the pot. You’ll see listed on lots of heating parts phrases like “low watt density”, and the Boil Coil isn’t any completely different. You don’t see knowledge on these parts to actually be capable to examine them. However in idea, the longer the size or the bigger the floor space of your coil that’s involved with the wort, the cooler the factor will likely be. If you happen to’re passing lots of energy by a small factor, it is going to get actually sizzling. That’s whenever you run the chance of burning issues in your wort and giving some undesired burnt flavors. So seeing the a number of loops of coil on this 2250W factor is an efficient factor.
The controller is a custom-built Excessive Gravity controller. It comes with a stainless temperature probe that inserts towards the underside of the kettle, and geese in between 2 coils of the Boil Coil in order to make sure it’s monitoring the most well liked a part of your wort, however not too shut. The controller has two working modes- “mash” and “boil”. In mash mode, the little dial knob lets you set the goal temperature and the PID controller adjusts output to the heating factor to keep away from overshoots, and keep temperature as soon as the goal is reached. Boil mode lets you alter the ability output from 0 – 100%. The controller is housed in a excessive power sealed ABS plastic field, preserving it gentle however nonetheless sturdy.
The Bayou Traditional kettle comes with a basket (presumably designed for decreasing or elevating your turkey out of the recent oil) that in use in an eBIAB system serves the operate of preserving your mesh mash bag held up away from the heating factor. It comes with a 15-gallon mesh bag from BrewBag. The bag, crammed with crushed grain, sits contained in the stainless basket for mashing. When your mash is over, you elevate the bag & basket out to both let it simply drain, or pour sparge water by it.
Recirculation of wort throughout the mash is dealt with by a TopsFlo pump as a base choice, or there’s an improve choice to the Blichmann RipTide pump. The pump plugs into the Wort Hog Controller, after which you have got simple on/off management with a easy change on the controller. The pump is related with ½” ID excessive temp silicone tubing, making use of cam lock fast join fittings. The pump inlet is fed from a ball lock valve situated tremendous low on the kettle, and the pump outlet feeds into the lid. Within the lid is a elaborate corkscrew stainless becoming that helps disperse any recirculating wort into a twig sample on prime of the grain mattress.
Fingers on Evaluate
I’ve lengthy wished to get my arms on the next energy output 120V electrical unit. It looks like the belief is should you’re brewing on 120V, you need to use it anyplace you have got an outlet in your own home, it doesn’t matter what’s on that very same circuit. So that they maintain the 120V stystems easy and dumb it down so you have got a lot of headroom on a primary 15A breaker and don’t need to cope with tripping the breaker. However a 20A 120V circuit is reasonable and simple to arrange, in order that’s what I did. And with a 2250W factor pulling virtually 19A, I used to be glad this might get me the complete potential of 120V. I actually was not upset.
I’ve used a number of programs with the 1500W and 1600W 120V parts and I discovered that roughly I’d get about 1 diploma per minute when stepping to my goal mash temperture. With the Wort Hog 2250W coil, I used to be averaging 2 levels per minute. Sounds small, however chopping these rise occasions in half is important. And as soon as I obtained to a boil, it pumped out a vigorous boil with just below 1 gallon/minute boil off fee, in comparison with about 0.65 gallons/minute boil off with 1500 & 1600W programs. Once more, a notable and quantifiable distinction in boil depth.
The controller virtually appeared too simplistic at first look. It has a twin digital temperature show with a rotary adjustment knob, after which the on/off switches for the heater and for the pump. When utilizing it, you rapidly understand that’s all you want at your fingertips. There are management setting changes and timers accessible inside a menu of the digital temperature show, however you don’t want or need these in your method whereas brewing. The rotary knob was virtually elegant in its simplicity. Quite than a digital button you need to push and launch 20 occasions when elevating your mash step temperature by 20 levels, you simply spin the knob to your goal temperature, and press the knob in as soon as. Quick and simple. The controller errs on the conservative aspect and I didn’t have any temperature overshoots in any respect. On multi-step mashes, the 2250W would cowl huge quantities of floor rapidly, and then you definitely’d have to attend a bit because it approached and backed away from the goal temp a couple of occasions when it obtained inside about 3 levels of the goal.
When the mash is finished and it’s time to boil, you simply push the knob in, flip the dial to pick “boil mode”, and push it once more, and also you’ve now modified from working in a goal temperature mode to % coil output mode. Spin the dial as much as 100% and also you’re off to the races. If you happen to’re doing a small batch and you discover 100% to be too aggressive of a boil, you may dial it again to 95%, 90%, or no matter you are feeling like.
Mash recirculation labored nicely, however did take some changes. The corkscrew becoming within the lid the place the recirculating wort comes out makes a extremely cool, good spray sample. The one downside is wants a reasonably excessive circulate fee to make that good sample. So it appears to be like candy whereas recirculating and heating your strike water, however I discovered that prime of a circulate fee when recirculating the mash was an excessive amount of. It could result in foaming on the prime of the mash and with the TopsFlo pump I needed to regulate issues and change the pump off now and again to let issues quiet down. I had a RipTide pump so I swapped the camlock fittings over to that, and it labored significantly better. I might dial the circulate restriction output on the pump to maintain from foaming up prime and ravenous the underside of fluid.
Throughout the mash, I additionally realized a tough lesson. Plugging my recipe into BeerSmith, it output the quantity of mash water I wanted to mash to get my mash thickness. The issue is, I didn’t understand simply how a lot fluid quantity match beneath the mash basket, so my tools set-up in BeerSmith was incorrect. I had an early batch that had method too thick of a mash after which ended up burning my heating coils miserably (copper scouring pad + Bar Keepers good friend labored superbly) by draining off a lot of the wort throughout recirculation. I then measured and located there was an entire whopping 2.5 gallons that match within the kettle earlier than it touched the underside of the mash basket. Plugging that into BeerSmith, the next batch went fairly nicely and had no scorching.
Amongst different options value noting, the camlock fast connects labored superbly. Not as slick as one-handed disconnects perhaps, however completely leak-free. Which is what you need. The mesh bag + stainless basket will not be as handy for draining your mash grains or sparging because the stainless mash/malt pipes present in different electrical models (should you you’re not doing full quantity mash). However Excessive Graviy got here up with a easy resolution of utilizing a stainless S-hook to hook by one of many massive basket holes after which hook to the pot lip to carry the grains as much as allow them to drain.
Conclusions
Total, the Wort Hog system carried out beautifully. Top quality elements held up solidly by the 4 batches I did, and gave me confidence these will likely be long-lasting performers. The 2250W factor delivered on precisely what I anticipated out of the 50% energy bump with speedier heating occasions and notably extra vigorous boil. Whereas I used to be initially skeptical concerning the simplistic controller, the benefit of the dial knob and mash/boil mode changeover fully gained me over on the primary batch. I do want the stainless malt basket resolution on different eBIAB programs over the nylon mesh bag only for ease of cleansing and friendliness to sparging, however I do know many individuals fortunately use the mesh luggage for BIAB. And though the TopsFlo pump is a good performer, you’ll both need to add in some form of output circulate restrictor into your system or go for the RipTide pump choice as a substitute, so that you don’t need to babysit the mash recirculation.
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Ensure that the elements you utilize are suitable and rated in your supposed software. Contact producer with questions on suitability or a particular software. All the time learn and comply with producer instructions. assessment:worthog tag:tpr rs:6
