ebrewsupply vs electric brewery pre assembled panel

Personally I ordered the 50A BCS DIY kit from Ebrew that he had on sale over Thanksgiving weekend. He is great to work with. In talking to him I modified the “kit” so I am getting the larger panel as I want some more room. I am adding some manual input push buttons so I don’t have to use the PC to interface with it. Also I will probably add a Volt/amp meter as well as possibly the PID displays at some point.

I was considering PID but I like to fiddle with things and hey, I work in IT. I have tons of computers but no right or wrong answer. Do what works best for you.

Since you have decided on PID route. Here is something to ask about. I get you are doing a buy an assembled product. I am not sure where they get their PIDs but Auber Inst is very popular. The thing to ask about is that there are two PIDs that Auber sells for this application.

One is the traditional one. You set the temp and in automatic mode it does its thing or put it in manual mode and run it in duty cycle mode. You definitely want this one for the BK PID because it has the manual duty cycle mode. When doing your sparge, wait for the element to be covered, then put it on auto @ 180 or so until ready to boil. Then flip to manual and bring it to boil and run around 70-80% duty cycle depending on element size, altitude and such. By doing this you are holding your liquid close to boil and you not standing around waiting for it when you are ready. This PID can also work for MT/RIMS/HLT depending on what you are doing and is the one I have normally seen used in most designs.

The other type is a newer one that has a build in ramp soak mode. This PID would be nice for a MT/RIMS/HLT application. It allows you to (optionally) program it. You can say hold 140 for 15 minutes, step to 150 for 45 minutes, step to 170 for sprage. that might be kind of nice if you want to do a step sparge. The problem with it is that you don’t want this PID for the BK as there is no manual duty cycle mode. You can only set the desired temp manually or run the program.

It is worth checking into if it is something you are interested in if you think you might want to do a step mash. A little more complex if you program it but you don’t have to. It can be run like the traditional one as well since in the MT/RIMS/HLT you probably are not going to use the duty cycle mode but rather select a desired temp. While not as flexible as a BCS it adds some of the features.

It may be an option in both products. I would ask as it might be a point to differentiate them as well in terms of features.