I mentioned earlier that most of the heat loss is through evaporation. Go back to my first graph and you'll see that evaporation loss becomes the largest heat loss past 180 degrees F.



Keeping the lid on your hot liquor tank and keeping the lid on your brew kettle until almost boil eliminates almost all of your evaporation heat loss.



The next step would be to insulate your hot liquor tank and brew kettle to reduce heat loss.



And finally, it's impossible to brew 10 gallon batches with a 1650 or 2000 Watt element and time consuming to brew with a 3500 Watt element. But a 4500 Watt or 5500 Watt element will work great.

For mash with a mash tun or RIMS tube a 1650 or 2000 watt 120V heating element will work fine, but this is assuming you are going to pre-heat your initial strike and sparge water.

If you want to do full mash including heating your sparge water then I recommend a 5500 watt heating element.

In my opinion, the ideal setup is a HLT heated with a 5500 watt element, a cooler based mash tun with a RIMS tube heated with a 1650 watt element and a boil pot heated with a 5500 watt element.



Thanks, Tom

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