hockeygreg44
Active Member
I recently made an electric heat stick following these instructions: http://lovebrewingcompany.com/brewing/diy/heatstick/ The only thing that I did differently is to use JB Weld Kwik because I has some lying around.
I built it a few days ago and today I went to test it out to see how much water I would lose to evaporation during an hour boil. I did check it yesterday for leaks by submerging it in water for a few minutes to see if I had any leaks. I did not. I collected 5 gallons of water at about 84F and put in my heat stick as well as turned my stove on to get it to boil. It worked great! I was able to heat that 5 gallons of water to boiling in about 34 minutes! I let it boil away for an hour not thinking any thing of it. After the boil, I let me heat stick cool and then set it no the counter. I immediately had about a half a cup, if not more, of water come rushing out onto my counter spilling everywhere. After I got that all cleaned up I looked at my heat stick to see if I could see any holes in the JB Weld, I saw one tiny pin prick and then I noticed that the JB Weld looked like it was peeling away from the metal!
Has anyone else had this happen to them, if so, is there any way that I can fix it? I am going to be brewing my first AG batch of beer on Sunday and I need another heat source to heat up my wort because my stove alone can not boil 5+ gallons at 1 time.
I built it a few days ago and today I went to test it out to see how much water I would lose to evaporation during an hour boil. I did check it yesterday for leaks by submerging it in water for a few minutes to see if I had any leaks. I did not. I collected 5 gallons of water at about 84F and put in my heat stick as well as turned my stove on to get it to boil. It worked great! I was able to heat that 5 gallons of water to boiling in about 34 minutes! I let it boil away for an hour not thinking any thing of it. After the boil, I let me heat stick cool and then set it no the counter. I immediately had about a half a cup, if not more, of water come rushing out onto my counter spilling everywhere. After I got that all cleaned up I looked at my heat stick to see if I could see any holes in the JB Weld, I saw one tiny pin prick and then I noticed that the JB Weld looked like it was peeling away from the metal!
Has anyone else had this happen to them, if so, is there any way that I can fix it? I am going to be brewing my first AG batch of beer on Sunday and I need another heat source to heat up my wort because my stove alone can not boil 5+ gallons at 1 time.
