Temperature controlled home brew

[perfectbite]

Beer maker Samuel Adams out of Mass. can make 500,000 barrels a year and still be considered a microbrewery. <p>If a home brewer made 15 finished gallons of suds a week their total for the year would be 780 gallons.<p>And, 5,500 (5K5) Watts would be nowhere near enough to melt a piece of steel the size of a paperback. Make it too warm to comfortably hold in the hand perhaps but not to melt it in less than a minute from room temperature. <p>
Thanks to Dale Y I learned a lot about the care and 'feeding' of 555/556 circuits and from bodgy (thanks) about the loading on the 240 VAC/25A SCRs (25A would be less current draw than two or three paralled 240VAC electric clothes dryers at full load and full heat).<p>I wondered about that bodgy. I realize that heaters have minimal inductive loads compared to motors but they must, even at 2Hz, have inductive values which would influence their control circuitry.<p>I can figure out the zero crossing requirement to keep the neighbours happy but what is an SSR when it's at home?<p>[ July 21, 2004: Message edited by: perfectbite ]</p>

[bodgy]

SSR is a Solid State Relay.<p>There are ones designed to trigger using a D voltage and others an AC one.<p>Basically they (the AC ones) are a LED and an opto triac encapsulated in a solid brick.<p>They are called relays but their operation is totally different.<p>I should probably say what the difference is between using an opto triac and an SSR.<p>They both do the same thing, however an opto triac has a low power rating and would almost certainly require a further triac after it as well as for safety reasons. This is where an SSR comes in.<p>The physical size of an SSR is much larger than that of an opto triac, its power rating will be higher abd doesn't require the added on external triac. From a safety point of view the space between the DC side of the SSR and the AC side is much greater. Designs intended to connect to the mains and certainly for public consumption must have a minimum distance between the AC/DC tracks, to prevent arc over, shorting etc. <p>Colin<p>[ July 22, 2004: Message edited by: bodgy ]</p>

[toejam]

Sounds like some pretty high temperature brewing to me. I like to keep my brewing vats about 68 degrees f.

[toejam]

On that hot water heater idea a thermostat from one could maybe tweaked to get to 170 or so degrees.