heater for water jacket canner

[BoarsNest]

I want to build a water jacket canner and found this immersion heater that has a thermostat for up to 190 degrees. Does anyone have any experience with these? Any suggestions before I move ahead?

http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/VULCAN-Automatic-Bushing-Immersion-Heater-2E928

[twofer]

For my electric homebrewing rig I used water heater elements and then a PID + SSR in a plastic junction box. Something to think about because it would be cheaper than $173. For all of the parts I think I had $90 into it.

The PID route would also allow you to place a thermocouple in the maple syrup and provide a display that would show you the maple syrup temperature with a quick glance.

[RileySugarbush]

The cheap way is to get a simple water heater element and control it with the mechanical thermostat off a garage sale coffee maker. Solder a copper tab to the bottom of your jacket pot and bolt on the thermostat, just like it was mounted to the aluminum coffee pot.

[BoarsNest]

Thanks for the input. Cheaper made me think different. Has anyone ever tried the double boiler method over propane? I have a three burner Cabela's stove that if I make an outer tank 13 x 25 x 10 and an inner tank 10 x 22 x 8-1/2 I could have pretty good control with three burners. Thoughts?

[twofer]

I think it would be hard for me to give up the convenience and automation you'd get with an electric element.

[BoarsNest]

New bottler worked great this weekend. To bring it up to temp I put it on our regular propane stove. It will fit over all 4 burners while I heat the water. Then I can slide it forward and it fits on the front two burners and I can hold them temp while we bottle. I can always add a heat element when we get electricity some day.

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[maple marc]

I'm thinking about a DIY water jacket canner....something that could hold 4 to 5 gallons. Could you please post more photos and details?

Thanks,
Marc

[BoarsNest]

I won't be back to my sugar shack until later this week to take some more pictures. When I get to work tomorrow I will find the drawings and send you a copy. The only problem is that I always put the thermometer a little higher than I wanted once it was built. Mine holds 10 gallons right to the top, but I would never fill it that full. There is about 4 gallons of water around the outside with about 1-1/2" space all around.

[user587]

Sorry for the late post, but I also did the home made water jacketed canner (see pic). I love it. Last year I used it to gravity filter, but this year I have a filter press so I use the canner for simply holding filtered syrup at temp for canning. I'm happy with then propane heat, I have a dual input thermocouple so I can read the water and syrup temp. Keep the water at about 200-205, it works great.5583

[lpakiz]

User 587,
Where did you get the dual input thermometer??

[user587]

User 587,
Where did you get the dual input thermometer??

ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dual-Two-Channel-2-K-Type-Digital-Thermometer-Thermocouple-Sensor-1300-C-2372-F-/130627236694?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e69fd7356

It's getting a bit sticky from syrup on the face - I need to stop switching it with sticky fingers. :) Other than that it works great.

I cannot recall where I got the K thermocouple probes, but they are readily available.

[maple marc]

Scott, I can't quite figure out if that is 3 pots or 2 that you have. Looks interesting. I like the idea of the thermocouples. Could you give us more details on the tap through the water jacket.

Thanks,
Marc

[user587]

Scott, I can't quite figure out if that is 3 pots or 2 that you have. Looks interesting. I like the idea of the thermocouples. Could you give us more details on the tap through the water jacket.

Thanks,
Marc

It's 2 vessels. The inner is a SS turkey fryer that I bought locally off craigslist. (came with the nice SS burner/arch also). The outer is a "bayou classic" (http://www.amazon.com/Bayou-Classic-1044-44-Quart-Stainless-Steel/dp/B000VXHKMC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331123625&sr=8-1 44 qt. pot.

To fabricate, I took the lid from the larger vessel and cut a round (well, kind of round anyway) hole in the lid to accept the smaller inner vessel. Also I cut this ring to leave a 3" wide port for filling/draining the water bath. The bottom of the inner pot is about 1" above the bottom of the larger vessel, with a small standoff piece of stainless welded to the bottom of the inner (flanged to rest loosely without cutting into the outer vessel).

For the ports to the inner, 1/2" stainless pipe nipples were used. I drilled a tight fitting clearance hole through the outer, then carved the end of the nipple to fit nicely against the wall of the the inner vessel. To assemble/weld, the sequence and sizes are important. The through-ports are first welded to the inner. The nipples must be short enough to allow the inner vessel to be installed down into the outer, but also the nipples must be long enough to fit back through the clearance holes in the outer and have enough exposed thread for fittings. There are 2 ports to the inner syrup area - 1 for a thermocouple, one for drawing off and filling bottles.

For the ports into the outer, they are simply 1/2" npt SS pipe coupling carved to fit the outer wall. There are 2 ports, but I only use 1 of them, for the thermocouple.

It works quite well for me, and it was not too expensive. I did all of the cutting/fitting, and had a co-worker weld the stainless, took him maybe 1-2 hours to weld.

A couple more pics:559355945595


Again, I do not use it for filtering anymore, the pics are from last year when it was used for filtering.

good luck!

[BoarsNest]

Here are a couple of pictures of my bottler in use.

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