Reddit reviews Allied Precision The Premier Line 742G Bucket Water Heater, Electric Immersion Heating Element Heats 5 Gallons of Water in Minutes with Auto Shutoff, Submersible Design is Heavy Duty and Portable 120V

What you want is something like this. I know/knew a guy who lived out of one of these and used it like a mini-rv.

He gutted the back and installed a bunk bed, shower, kitchen with fridge/freezer and some general storage.

If you have somewhere you can park it and can make use of some of the surrounding land you can do a few neat things.

1: use a compost style toilet. Build a compost bin and all your organic waste (this includes human waste ie: poop) goes into the compost bin.

This only leaves plastic and metal trash that can be recycled. So you won't need to pay for trash service or deal with sewage.

If you don't have room to build a shower in your van/truck you can build a small outdoor shower. Anything from a $10 solar shower bag from wal-mart to a 5 gallon bucket of water heated with a portable plugin water heater. You can buy those at any farm & tractor supply type stores.

They heat up fast too, 5-10 minutes. You can also use this method to heat water for doing your dishes too.

For that you'll want 3 plastic tubs from wal-mart ($1-2 apiece) Use one for hot soapy water and 2 others with clean water for rinsing. Wash, prerinse, rinse.

For food, your cheapest bet is dry/canned goods. Or you can get a small fridge or freezer and run it off a battery and charge the battery up once or twice per day.

For cooking you can get gas powered stuff and cook outside or electric portable stuff (toaster oven, microwave, hot plate) and just turn your vehicle on when cooking.

you need a digital temp controller ( here ), a 1000watt horse trough heater ( here ) and a submersible pump ( here ).

https://www.amazon.com/Allied-Precision-Premier-742G-Bucket/dp/B000BDB4UG

Looks like the first reviewer on Amazon did exactly what you're doing.

Typically the electric stoves dont have enough power to do a full boil. You can supplement the power of your stove with an additional heating element like a heat stick(plenty of DIY instructions floating around), or one of these.

You're wrong. The average cost of electricity is ~$0.11/kWh. 1000w is enough to boil three gallons of water very quickly, just google 'water boilers 1000w: http://www.amazon.com/MARSHALLTOWN-Premier-742G-Bucket-Heater/dp/B000BDB4UG/ref=sr_1_1?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1356817956&sr=1-1&keywords=Bucket+Water+Heater . The true cost of the extra cup of coffee is a tiny speck of that, as we are calculating just the increased energy usage vs normal coffee heating, so we're talking maybe a penny's cost for each pot of coffee.

A small coffee at McDonalds costs is $0.99 before tax.

One extra cup would greatly offset the cost of heating a pot. That's a 900% return on that investment. That's insanely huge, and now you see why McDonald's did it.

On top of that McDonalds sells ~1 billion cups of coffee a year (http://scheingrosslaw.com/mcdonalds-coffee-lawsuit/). A pot of coffee makes ~12 cups of cofee. That's a 8% increase in coffee sales with a 0% increase in food cost. That's 80 million cups of coffee that cost McDonald's less than a penny each to produce.

You can see very easily now, why McDonald's would say 'fuck you lady'

Random thoughts:

• if your tap water is colder than room temp, fill the kettle the night before so it has time to warm up a bit
  
• put a lid on the kettle (only for heating up: you want the lid off for your boil)
  
• upgrade your propane burner. E.g. the new Blichmann burners put out 140k BTU/hr and some of them top out at a crazy 220k BTU/hr.
  
• make sure you have a wind-screen around your propane burner. Sometimes cheap or DIY stands omit this and it causes the burner to be a lot less efficient
  
• make sure you have adjusted the air/propane mixture. you don't want any orange flames.
  
• some sort of submersible electrical heater
  
• heat some of the water up in a smaller pot on your kitchen stove, then combine
  
• find something else to do while the water is heating up. prep ingredients, sanitize your fermenter, drink a beer, etc.

you can use a heat stick to speed it up, i have used this one

Have any of you used something like THIS to help your stove keep up, or have any similar suggestions? I did my first boil last weekend and the coils on my stove actually burned through their coating. I plan on using propane outdoors in the spring after this upcoming Minnesota winter.

http://www.amazon.com/MARSHALLTOWN-Premier-742G-Bucket-Heater/dp/B000BDB4UG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345641614&sr=8-1&keywords=bucket+heater

I don't know if you'll be able to find a commercial product that is 1500W.

I'll start with the electrical device, it's a heat stick. You can build one yourself, but I opted to buy one from Amazon. You stick it in the wort and plug it in and it adds some direct heat to help boil faster. It makes a night and day difference in the speed it takes to get to boil.

I made the insulating jackets myself out of some Reflectix and Foil Tape. I can't really tell you how well it's doing with 10.5gal pot since I wrapped it right away so I don't have any good before/after there, but with my 5 gallon pot it allowed me to get to boil a couple minutes faster and also allowed the pot to hold the boil on its own, meaning I could take the heatstick out once it got boiling.

Another thing you can't see in the picture, is the 8" element is a canning element, which is a bit higher wattage than my regular 8" element so it burns a bit hotter, which helps with boiling.

A step further. MORE POWER!

This is probably the best tool I own when it comes to BIAB on an electric stove. With it, I can boil 6.5 gallons of wort in about 15-20 minutes (in conjunction with the stovetop on high).

No experiance with it but thinking about one of these
bucket heater

I would recommend you just buy one of these: http://www.amazon.com/MARSHALLTOWN-Premier-742G-Bucket-Heater/dp/B000BDB4UG/

Good solution if you don't have an outdoor brew space. Adds enough BTUs to do a full boil on 2 gas stove burners.

I use this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000BDB4UG/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_LKjTub0HX6E86

I just plug it in and set it into the center of the wort. This stick elevates the temperature in my kettle to a rolling boil without fuss.

I brew ten gallons on the stove top with a 15 gallon blichmann boil kettle and a heat stick.

The manufacturer says it wasn't designed to be food-grade safe regarding the welds for the casing, but hey, at the amount I drink, brewing at least three times a month on a 10-gallon scale, I'm pretty sure cancer from the heat stick is the least of my concerns.

Here's my setup.

I have a 10 Gallon Triclamp stainless kettle. It comes with a heating element port already attached so you simply need to screw in a heating element.

This is my heating element -- 1500w which is the max limit for a 15A circuit. Stole a heavy duty 3 prong cord from an old PC -- it plugs into a GFCI outlet.

Now, 1500w isn't quite enough to bring 7-8 gallons to a rolling boil so I use a 1000w Immersion Heater. Bucket heater plugs into a second GFCI outlet on a different circuit.

Total cost ~$300 Canadian or like Free in USD.

Heats hot tap water to strike temp in 15 minutes and gets it to nice rolling boil in about 20 after that. About the same time as my propane burner.

My setup is indeed a cooler box with a ball valve poking out it, using the steel braid from the outside of a hose to lauter (and a few other things like a 1/2" nipple through where the drain was and a hose to drain it) but you can just use a kettle with a grain bag in it. If you go the cooler way, make sure everything is stainless or brass cause it'll taste like shit if your stuff corrodes in the mash.

Something like this could be used to supplement your stovetop. I actually do the boil in 2 separate 5 gallon kettles on the stove top myself, so don't need one. If you want to do it on a stove top in one big kettle you may need supplemental heat, 1500W should be plenty. Most people buy an outdoor propane burner for it.

I bought a bucket heater, and it is great! Plug it in, go do some stuff and come back later to strike temp. Or set up with a temp controller/timer, etc.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000BDB4UG?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf

Technically, the primary reason to fully boil the wort is to reduce the volume and concentrate it. DMS decomposition occurs starting at around 120F IIRC, and evaporates down to 100F or so. The Oxide (DMSO) is much less volatile, and does not evaporate until about 180F, but is generally produced in much lower quantities (especially if you are doing extract, since there really should be no reason for excess oxygen to enter the wort). Hop acids and whatnot dissolve just fine at non-boiling temperatures.

Honestly, it's far from ideal if you cannot reach a full boil, but it also isn't the end of the world. It's more important to not cover the wort if you can avoid it, and keep it as hot as possible. You'll end up with beer on the other side, and it will probably taste fine, if not a bit weaker than expected, though once again, since it is an extract brew you can just use less water to top it off (or throw in some extra extract to compensate). If you want to stay electric and indoors, you can try something like this to help you get a better stove boil.

Agreed. Those propane units are awesome.

You could also use a camp shower bag. Hang outside during the day to warm. Now, those aren't going to be very long showers, but enough to get a person clean. I suspect you'd need a bag per person.

Another option is this added to this. Again, it's going to be a short shower, but it will work.

I used this one when I was stuck brewing on the stove in my last apartment:
http://www.amazon.com/Allied-Precision-Premier-742G-Bucket/dp/B000BDB4UG

Gave me no issues at all, though I've since moved into a house where I can brew outside with propane.

Thank you! Just purchased this water heater, by browsing your list. It's exactly what I need to get my water up to temp on my dinky stove!

Hey dude:

I brewed a lot in a small bachelor's barracks in Korea with a shitty coil stove top.

1. You don't want a 5 gallon pot; boil overs for days. I had a 7.5 gallon pot and for a full-volume boil, that was a bit too small. Even for a stove top, you'll really want a 10 gallon pot with a ball valve (i had a siphon. Siphons suck. A lot of people will tell you (myself included) that one of the biggest steps you can take for your beer to taste better. If I could do my first step all over again, i'd have gone with one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Bayou-Classic-gallon-Kettle-Stainless/dp/B00OBMB7CI?th=1 (or a Spike).
   
   
2. Get the bigger pot even with a smaller stove. You can get a number of 110v water heaters on the relative cheap that'll bring it up to a boil super quick. I had (I think) this one, and it worked just fine to bring 6 or 7 gallons up to a boil in combination with my stove. https://www.amazon.com/Precision-Premier-Line-742G-Submersible/dp/B000BDB4UG/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1509719891&sr=8-3&keywords=bucket+heater
   
   
3. You'll want to cool that down. An icewater bath tub will take its good god damn time getting there; you might want to look at an immersion chiller (NY Brew Supply sold me a 50 foot one on the dirt cheap back then).
   
   For the record, I did all of this (and got an insulated bag for temperature control) before I did my first batch; if you make it more painful on yourself and get an inferior product, then you'll probably not want to do it again.

I haven't brewed since I moved and am stuck in a house without a water spigot. I am about to pull the trigger on this water bucket heater so I can brew inside on my stove top. Long weekend and beer brewing sounds good to me!

I bought a heat stick to help with the boil and it boils quite nicely now.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BDB4UG/ref=s9_simh_gw_g469_i4_r?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=desktop-1&pf_rd_r=1S0G8JPEZT1W9E7JJR0T&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=2079475242&pf_rd_i=desktop

I'm upgrading my setup but I'm unable to build a complete eBIAB system. In the meantime I'm looking at buying this heating element to supplement the stovetop. I've seen it pop up around here nDoes anyone have any experience with this?

9a, northeast florida. Doesn't get too cold here, but cold enough I lost a fish in October without a heater. The temperature controller is an STC1000, commonly used for homebrewing but it works great for the tank as well, the temperature probe it comes with is water proof, and its cheap. The heater is a 5 gallon bucket heater, designed to get 5 gallons quite hot, but does a good job of keeping 250 gallons at 65. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BDB4UG/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Right now it's in the 40s outside overnight, but usually in the 50-60 range, with really cold snaps to the 20s. I have my system in a plastic tarp greenhouse. The tarp just keeps the wind out because its too thin to actually hold any heat. I'm upgrading to a "real" greenhouse type of 6 mil sheeting that should help hold in heat and maybe reduce the time the heater has to stay operational.

I also have a mini rocket mass heater I built on the side of the tank as an experiment. The exhaust runs through about 60lbs of sand stacked against the side of my wood and pond liner tank before exiting out the top of the greenhouse. Plan was to run that for a few hours before really cold nights, heat up the sand and help keep the side of the tank warm. In reality I dont think the heat is transferring through the wooden walls the tank much if at all. And any ambient heating the sand and heater are doing is being lost through the thin plastic sheeting. I'm interested in seeing how that changes with the thicker plastic too. I only just got the mass heater working though, so it doesn't influence what I said about the water heater.

in kettle? No, not personally, but I do use a heat stick, and you can DIY that or get one for pretty cheap off amazon.

They work really well! Apartment brewing forever temporarily!

I bought a bucket heater to use on my stovetop. I had a hard time even bringing 3 gallons to a boil and this thing is awesome. I put the pot on the stove, and use this heat stick inside of it as well. I can get a pretty decent rolling boil going. The only problem is that both the heatstick and my stove shut off at a certain temperature, so the boil is not consistent. Still a great solution until I move outdoors and start using a turkey fryer.

I guess he was saving water, and instead of using hot water, he used this to keep the water hot, or heat it up. he passed away in the tub with this thing still in there, it might not have been an active boil, i'm pretty sure it was just like a huge slow cooker..yeah, near boil, until it dried up. i'm sure that it was a few days before they found him.
http://www.amazon.ca/Bucket-Heater-Allied-14In-1000W/dp/B000BDB4UG

which bucket heater on amazon use 1500 watts? I can only find this one that is 1000 watts. http://www.amazon.com/MARSHALLTOWN-Premier-742G-Bucket-Heater/dp/B000BDB4UG/ref=pd_sim_lg_3

Please let me know! I've been looking forever for a 1500 watt pre-made heat stick.

Perhaps using something like this.

This being an electric element, you SHOULD NOT get in the tub while this is immersed and plugged in.

For the driftwood you can always get a 55 gallon drum and a bucket heater and insulate the drum to actually get it to near boiling temperatures or add a second bucket heater to get it boiling. I used the foil covered bubble wrap stuff when I did mine. Plus had it sitting on a 2" piece of styrofoam to keep it off the cold ground. With one heater I got it to about 180℉. Walked into a muggy jungle garage when I did that.

Allied Precision The Premier Line 742G Bucket Water Heater https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000BDB4UG/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_B15Bwb6FH6K18

Thanks!

E.g. https://www.amazon.ca/MARSHALLTOWN-Premier-Line-742G-Bucket/dp/B000BDB4UG ?

If it comes down to using electric I have been using [these] (http://www.amazon.com/Allied-Precision-Premier-742G-Bucket/dp/B000BDB4UG/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1382967988&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=bucket+heater). I have them hooked them up to a spa thermostat to turn them on and off.

I brew 5 gallon batches with two of these 1000 watt bucket heaters. 1500 watts each would be a bit better and quicker, but they work fine and are easy to clean.


Just make sure you plug them into two separate breakers.

A bucket heater can add enough heat to do the trick, I used this one for several years on my weak stovetop - http://www.amazon.com/Allied-Precision-Premier-742G-Bucket/dp/B000BDB4UG

I've been using a similar one about three times a month during my brew sessions for over a year now, I've never had a problem. So long as you have a GFCI outlet you'll be fine.

It saves me a ton of time getting to a boil on my gas stove top.

Edit: Now comparing this one to mine, I realize this doesn't utilize a ground prong (not sure if that matters) nor does it have the safety shut off if it's out of water, so this thing will cook as long as it's plugged in, brewday cattle prod anyone?