Interesting. To be clear though, I am not aiming at holding a temperature. I am interested in controlling the amount of latent heat of evaporation of water at boiling point. With the 3kW element alone it will of course hold 100*C fine. Unfortunately with a high enough evapouration rate that it literally rains beer afterwards from the cieling. About 5 litres of beer turns into rain.
So temperature regulation is out. If I needed temp regulation I could use the built in bi-metalic thermostat.
The proper way to do this is to install two heating elements, one double the power of the other e.g. 1kW and 2kW
Run the 2kW element from a standard bi-metallic thermostat. Use the PWM controller on the 1kW element.
Interesting. I had been bouncing a similar idea around. As this is a "rush" job now, ideal can wait.
If I simply take what I have now, the built in 3kw ring element in a "tea urn", but purchase a "Travel Kettle" with a 1kW immersion coil element.... then I can jury rid that 1kW element into the boiler to hold the boil.
I expect 1kW (based on the variac position) would be grand to maintain the boil. At least in a pinch.
By "jury rig" though I mean something your mum wouldn't like and your spark would disown. Like cut the element out of the kettle in it's full doubly insulated form and "dump" it in the wort, cable and all!
At least it's "boil side" so it doesn't need that much sanitation first!
The whole stainless steel boiler is earthed. "What could possibly go wrong?"
The "Proper" and "Best" way I believe to solve this is actually a large 8kW propane burner and a proper stainless steel "kettle" on a stand. That would however force me to do the full 1-1.5 hour boil outdoors... and if I don't fancy carrying around 25 litres of hot wort, also the cooling, transfers etc. Trouble is, a "home brew" kettle is about £300. An industrial sized pot capable of taking first propane heat for hours is probably half that, but it will lack nice features like temp probes, proper ball values, filters etc.
My £40 coffee/tea urn does just fine! Eventually it's bottom will rust out, but it's got a few years left in it yet.
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