Ace electric boilers?

nigelnorris said:

Which reminds me, I bought some Irish Moss and forgot to use it. Would have been pointless anyway presumably if I transferred the entire deposit into my FV.

Click to expand...

I don't think so. The coagulated proteins will fall out easier than those floating free in the wort. They combine together forming larger clumps and drop out. If they end up in your FV as trub granules, just rack off carefully with your racking cane or tube above the trub and near the end of the syphoning, just gently tilt the FV so that clean beer flows down to the tube about half an inch above the trub. The trub generally stays put (within reason) and the beer flows downhill to the racking tube. You will lose virtually no beer if you do it right.

Funny thing is my lower gravity brews didn't clog up the filter. This problem started going as my grain bills went up. Don't despair - a £7 hose braid sorted it out for me. It was the simplest fix I ever did.

Oh gosh, no desperation here. This is all new to me, experimentation is definitely part of the fun.

nigelnorris said:

Oh gosh, no desperation here. This is all new to me, experimentation is definitely part of the fun.

Click to expand...

:) - yeah - 'despair' would be a bit strong unless you were Italian... :) I can say that because my family are Italian - at least, we have an Italian surname and my great grandfather and grandmother came from there in 1895. :)

Tony1951 said:

:) - yeah - 'despair' would be a bit strong unless you were Italian... :) I can say that because my family are Italian - at least, we have an Italian surname and my great grandfather and grandmother came from there in 1895. :)

Click to expand...

Shouldn't your name be Toni1951 then? :lol:

Tony1951 said:

:) - yeah - 'despair' would be a bit strong unless you were Italian... :) I can say that because my family are Italian - at least, we have an Italian surname and my great grandfather and grandmother came from there in 1895. :)

Click to expand...

20 minutes drive through the Mont Blanc tunnel for us....land of suckling pig, cracking coffee, and smiling people.

Although given the majority (with a few exceptions) of the beer served there (as in France) then maybe a little despair is warranted! [emoji1]

I remember driving through the Mont Blanc tunnel on my motorbike with my then 10 year old son on the back. Its a while ago - he is thirty-five now... :) We had been in Italy and were on our way back to meet my brother who was in Provence at the time. Happy days. What an adventure that was. The lad still talks about it -especially driving through the night on the way back from Paris with the wind and the roar of the single cylinder engine. It was a bloody 250cc bike as well - unbelieveable. We did 1750 miles with not a splutter. I changed the oil at the roadside though - did it every thousand miles religiously. Put it in a big bottle and dumped it in the trash. The only thing we did was adjust the chain.


5AM on the verge of the Autroute de Solie. We just stopped at night and lay down on the verge until first light.

I've had one for over a year now and I can report no problems.
I have done 25 brews at 40 pints each.
The one I've got has a mesh strainer in it, which is removable for cleaning.
I use it a mash tun. When the temperature is correct I pour in the grain, taking into account of the temperature drop incurred. I then wrap it in an old but good sleeping bag and leave it for 90 mins. No further heating required as the temperature drop is only 3 degrees.
Drain and sparge. Transfer back and do the boil.

Tony1951 said:

I remember driving through the Mont Blanc tunnel on my motorbike with my then 10 year old son on the back. Its a while ago - he is thirty-five now... :) We had been in Italy and were on our way back to meet my brother who was in Provence at the time. Happy days. What an adventure that was. The lad still talks about it -especially driving through the night on the way back from Paris with the wind and the roar of the single cylinder engine. It was a bloody 250cc bike as well - unbelieveable. We did 1750 miles with not a splutter. I changed the oil at the roadside though - did it every thousand miles religiously. Put it in a big bottle and dumped it in the trash. The only thing we did was adjust the chain.


5AM on the verge of the Autroute de Solie. We just stopped at night and lay down on the verge until first light.

Click to expand...

Priceless. My boy's only 9 at the moment, but I've already got a few of those road trips planned. Our current ones are done in an SMAX....not quite as romantic as a 250cc [emoji1]

Did another brew last night, drained freely with the FB in. Looks like my luck is holding. Mrs DC is off on a bike tour of Lake Annecy next Friday so another brew day planned...Speckled Hen clone this time. After that I'd like to try a few IPAs...might tap you for ideas!

I've just done my first brew using one of these (after fixing the tap that was leaking). All seems to have gone well, I'm just waiting for it to cool down, I need to make an immersion cooler as it's probably going to take 12 hours to cool!

rory_way said:

I've just done my first brew using one of these (after fixing the tap that was leaking). All seems to have gone well, I'm just waiting for it to cool down, I need to make an immersion cooler as it's probably going to take 12 hours to cool!

Click to expand...

Good luck with that. You DEFINITELY need a chiller. I got some bad brews in mine at first waiting for the wort to cool down. It took about twenty hours and I got much too much hop utilisation. The beer was poor until I got my chiller.

Wort needs to be chilled fast unless you have factored long slow cool down into the recipe. The ACE is insulated and that makes cool down much slower.

I was gob smacked how quickly my home-made cooler worked. I turned the tap on, walked away for literally 5 or ten minutes, came back and checked. I was expecting a few degree drop and it had gone down from boiling to 30 degrees. Only took a few more minutes for the last few degrees. That's just a 10m by 10mm hand bent copper coil, less than 30 quid and half an hour to make.

+1 for the immersion cooler. Mine is an eBay stainless steel German import (couldn't resist it[emoji1]) and I need to keep a close I on the temp to ensure it doesn't drop too far!

I've also chilled in the boiler and in the FV and am wondering which (if any) is the better method? Does it make any difference?

Chilling in the boiler meant that I didn't need to sterilise the chiller - just popped it in the wort at the end of the boil. I also wondered if it would help to drop out some of the trub before decanting into the FV....


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Tony1951 said:

Good luck with that. You DEFINITELY need a chiller. I got some bad brews in mine at first waiting for the wort to cool down. It took about twenty hours and I got much too much hop utilisation. The beer was poor until I got my chiller.

Wort needs to be chilled fast unless you have factored long slow cool down into the recipe. The ACE is insulated and that makes cool down much slower.

Click to expand...

Yeah I had that cooling issue, I hope the beer doesn't come out too bad. I'll get a chiller for the next batch!

Thanks for the advice.

rory_way said:

Yeah I had that cooling issue, I hope the beer doesn't come out too bad. I'll get a chiller for the next batch!

Thanks for the advice.

Click to expand...

Yes - having the chiller transformed my brewing.

I bought a 30L ACE boiler with a SS false bottom in Sept last year. I must have made about 10 or more brews using the system and very pleased with the performance.

Contrary to most other people in this thread, I don’t use it as a BIAG or all in one system.

I started all grain brewing with a single 50L electric brew pot, and an igloo mash Tun from the Home Brew Shop in Aldershot. I wanted more control of the mash temperature so I bought the ACE boiler.

On the night before brew day, I fill the 50L pot with water and use a ITC 1000 temperature control unit and a B&Q timer to ensure the water is at strike temperature nice and early the next day.

I pump part of this water into the ACE boiler and mix in the grain.

Then I swap the pump over to the outlet of the ACE boiler and circulate the mash, using the ACE heating element to change the temperature as I require throughout the mash.

I found that if you did not circulate the mash, because the mash is so stodgy, the bottom of the pot got too hot.

After 60mins or so I drain the wort from the ACE boiler into a spare pot, then fly sparge the rest of the water over the mash.

Finally I transfer all the wort back to the 50L brew pot for the boil.

With this set up end up with a fermenter volume of about 23L, I get a mash efficiency of about 85% (total Brewhouse efficiency 75%), and my brew day takes about 5 hours.

Whichever way you choose to use the ACE boiler… it is definitely worth the buy.

Just checked and it's going for £1099.99 Good old buggy eBay.

BeerCat said:

Just checked and it's going for £1099.99 Good old buggy eBay.

Click to expand...

They've always got at least 4 versions for sale, but when I enquired they were all the same except for with/without timer. They said all came with false bottom and hop/grain bag.

houseofcole said:

Then I swap the pump over to the outlet of the ACE boiler and circulate the mash, using the ACE heating element to change the temperature as I require throughout the mash.

I found that if you did not circulate the mash, because the mash is so stodgy, the bottom of the pot got too hot.

After 60mins or so I drain the wort from the ACE boiler into a spare pot, then fly sparge the rest of the water over the mash.

Finally I transfer all the wort back to the 50L brew pot for the boil.

Click to expand...

Hi Houseofcole

I'm interesting in testing different sparging techniques in future. I've bought a little solar pump to have a play.

What are you using to reintroduce the wort to the ACE - eg a shower head, spray arm etc?

Thanks!

donchiquon said:

They've always got at least 4 versions for sale, but when I enquired they were all the same except for with/without timer. They said all came with false bottom and hop/grain bag.

Click to expand...

Last time I looked the ones with outlandish prices were legacy adverts for items no longer stocked such as the old 2.5kw heater version. Presumably they want to keep the advert in place to save creating new text if some old stock comes back, but putting a silly price is a marker to make sure no one bothers to look too closely.

I have been looking at these boilers on eBay and notice that some of them have a 1600w element rather than the 2400w that has been mentioned. Are these new ones less power for a reason? I would of thought the higher power ones would be better and quicker to bring to the boil?

Jas