Has anyone modified their coffee urn thermostat?

[Polish Wizard]

Please correct me if you know I'm wrong.
Water needs to boil at 212 to rise up the center pipe in a small coffee urn to perk your coffee.
We need to maintain at least 180 to use this type of urn to bottle syrup.

I read a thread where one man found numerous new urns failed to maintain over 145 degree in spite of company literature touting a higher temp.

Has anyone modified their urn to meet the 180 requirement?
Did you replace a thermostat to do this?
Did you jumper out the existing thermostat to make the urn provide heat without ever shutting off?

I found a 185 thermostat on-line and it's supposed to be a replacement for coffee urns, but it seems to be a NO (normally open) switch.
http://www.uxcell.com/bimetal-disc-thermostat-temperature-switch-celsius-pcs-p-158987.html
I would assume we're looking for NC, so it would open at 185 to protect the urn's contents from overheating.
I have no idea when this thermostat would turn back on after a drop in temperature.
You'll see this company is located in Hong Kong, and you can find this product on Amazon as well.

Any thoughts?

[berkshires]

Please correct me if you know I'm wrong.
Water needs to boil at 212 to rise up the center pipe in a small coffee urn to perk your coffee.
We need to maintain at least 180 to use this type of urn to bottle syrup.

I read a thread where one man found numerous new urns failed to maintain over 145 degree in spite of company literature touting a higher temp.

Has anyone modified their urn to meet the 180 requirement?
Did you replace a thermostat to do this?
Did you jumper out the existing thermostat to make the urn provide heat without ever shutting off?

I found a 185 thermostat on-line and it's supposed to be a replacement for coffee urns, but it seems to be a NO (normally open) switch.
http://www.uxcell.com/bimetal-disc-thermostat-temperature-switch-celsius-pcs-p-158987.html
I would assume we're looking for NC, so it would open at 185 to protect the urn's contents from overheating.
I have no idea when this thermostat would turn back on after a drop in temperature.
You'll see this company is located in Hong Kong, and you can find this product on Amazon as well.

Any thoughts?

After bringing my coffee urn up to boiling temp, it typically drops to 180. At that point I empty the water from mine, and turn it off. In my experience, even though it's supposed to keep my syrup at 180, it creates enough heat at the bottom to create a little more niter. If I have a lot of syrup to process, I might repeat the process of boiling more water to bring it up to temp. But I never leave it on "warm".

[NH Maplemaker]

Polish Wizard, Just a thought! You could bypass the coffee urns thermostat completely ,then buy an ink bird temp controller ( used for fermentation for home distillers ) off amazon for $35.00 bucks! Then program it and let it control the urns temp completely. Set it up so high temp is 185* Low temp at 182 *it will keep it right there for you! Just a thought. We us a commercial urn which runs a lot higher temperatures.

[Polish Wizard]

So far I've been heating water in my urn, dumping it when the urn reaches max temp, and haven't noticed niter issues with the (max) couple gallons I process each time I bottle.
My urn is a rather small one that I found for minimal dollars at flea market. Thought I'd give it a test, and it's done well for me --- until the spout lever broke.
Looks like I can buy replacements for about $7, but I'm still considering upgrading/upsizing.

The InkBird device looks promising, and a Q/A portion on Amazon show the probe is indeed waterproof.

I'm curious, NH Mapmaker, can you tell me more about your commercial urn?

[NH Maplemaker]

Polish Wizard, Coffee urn is a commercial coffee maker. It is doubled sided and has a water jacket that keeps syrup hot! It hold 6 gal of syrup and about 10 or more gallons of water which is very handy for cleaning around the sugar House. The urn will take syrup all the way up to 200 plus degrees then there is a hold button that holds the temp around 185*! the best part is being a water jacketed unit you never worry about scorching the syrup.
If you can open my photo bucket page there are a few pictures of it . My old one has the round tops , newer one is the square one! old one was gas. Newer one is electric which is the one we are using now. Tried to post picture but with out my five year old grandson here can't do it! LOL

[BrierPatch]

I have modified a coffee urn to use as a bottler. I have only got to test it with water so far though. It seemed to keep it hot enough, but I don't remember if it held a 180 deg. or not. The thermostat may not work quite as you think, at least mine was not what I thought it would be. There are 2 heating elements in my coffee urn. A high power one for boiling/percolating and then a second one that goes in series with the percolating heating element to reduce the power thru it. The thermostat was a NC contact, but it is used to short out (take the warming heating element out of the circuit). When the urn gets up to temp, the thermostat opens up and puts the warming heating element in the circuit in series with the percolating heater element. What I did was, just remove the thermostat from the circuit, remember this is only used to switch it to the warming mode. So my urn is always in the warming mode, it will never percolate. Since we are adding the syrup hot there really is no need for the percolator anyway, we are just trying to maintain the temp. This may be why some people have varied experiences, depending on how fast you dump your water and then put your syrup in, the urn may have cooled enough to go back into percolating/boiling and create some niter. By removing the thermostat on mine it cannot go into the percolating mode and boil the syrup.

I am an Electrical Engineer by degree (long time ago), so my understanding and confidence in this might be a little higher than others.

Hope this helps

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[Polish Wizard]

Thanks to all for the details and suggestions.
And BrierPatch, your photo with the radio and stuff looks too much like the way my life has evolved.
When I traveled to visit a friend, the first thing he jokingly handed me was a pager to hang on my belt so I wouldn't go through withdrawal since I was away from my home fire service obligations.

[BrierPatch]

Ok, so you got me wondering how my urn is going to work. I put a gallon of hot water (about 125 deg.) in it and plugged it in. After about 3-4 hours the temp was up to 175 deg. Then after about another 1 1/2 hr. the temp was up to 183. After a little longer I did notice possibly a very slight boil (1 small bubble about every second) at the side of the center heating element. So it looks like mine is going to work for what I was hoping for. I was just wanting something to give me a little more time and be easier to bottle with the spout. Don't know if I got a weird one or maybe it's the modification I made of taking the temperature switch out of the circuit, but it looks like it is going to work. Looks like the model is a West Bend 58030. Let me know if you are interested in the details of the mod I made and I can try and get you more details.

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[psparr]

That seems like an awfully long time to heat up. When you do use it, only put an inch or so of water in it and get the thermostat to kick into the hold mode. Then dump the water without unplugging it and quickly start filtering into it.

[Polish Wizard]

BrierPatch,
Thanks for the details on your urn wiring.
Anytime I used my urn I left the stem installed to heat water and subsequently heat the urn, but I removed it when I poured my hot syrup into the urn.
I hoped to have the urn provide a bit of heat to help keep the syrup warm, rather than it all cool if my bottling process wasn't as quick as I hoped.

I purchased some self-adhering insulation that I plan to wrap around the urn. Maybe this will help maintain syrup warmth.

Since I remove the stem when the syrup is in the tank, what would be your suggestion for altering (or not) any wires or thermostats in my urn?
I can't imagine I would get much niter even if the urn remains factory original.
I think I'd rather be sure the unit is producing full heat.
You mentioned the urn may drop into maintaining mode once I remove the heated water.
I assume it is a old West Bend product, and I just ordered a couple replacement spouts based on hole size (West Bend seems to use 1/2" spouts)

[BrierPatch]

That seems like an awfully long time to heat up. When you do use it, only put an inch or so of water in it and get the thermostat to kick into the hold mode. Then dump the water without unplugging it and quickly start filtering into it.

Sorry, if you look up a few posts earlier you can see where I have modified my urn to always be in the warming/holding mode. The concern was whether or not the urn could hold/maintain syrup at the 180 deg. temp. So I decided to let it warm it up on it's own just to see if it could reach the 180 deg. The concerns of the original post was that most would only hold/maintain around 145.

[psparr]

I see. Did not read the whole thread first.

[BrierPatch]

BrierPatch,
I purchased some self-adhering insulation that I plan to wrap around the urn. Maybe this will help maintain syrup warmth.

I had the same thought if mine was only going to get to 145, but now that I know it will make it to 180 without any insulation I'm not going to bother putting any on it.


BrierPatch,
Since I remove the stem when the syrup is in the tank, what would be your suggestion for altering (or not) any wires or thermostats in my urn?

I'm no coffee urn expert, but there is no need to have the stem in it, even when preheating with water. The stem is only a hollow tube to get the hot boiled water from the bottom heating well up and over the coffee basket, it really doesn't provide any heating.

I would recommend doing a simple test with water and see what the results are. Try boiling some water on the stove and then pour it in your urn like you would syrup and see how it goes. Maybe you don't need any modifications. Maybe yours will maintain 180 deg. in the warming mode also. The only real benifit I get from my mod is that I don't have to preheat my urn with water and dump it and I don't have to worry about it possibly boiling the sap once added. After my test today I would recommend my mod because it seems to work well and can reach the 180 deg. point, but it depends if your urn is wired the same as mine and if you feel confident enough to make the mod for it to be worth it, but I am really happy with the results on mine. But once your urn goes into the warming/hold mode it's pretty much what you get. So if your urn will not maintain 180 deg in the warming mode already, then my mod should not help it. I would test it first to see if it will make 180 and if it won't then we can get more details on your specific model and see if there are options to imporve it, like insulation, re-wiring, new thermostat, or external temperature controllers. I will say I'm a little leary of the external temp controller because I'm afraid you might still get some localized boiling around the heating element, thus creating niter. Even like mine, in order for it to maintain 180 in the middle to upper section, it was probably close to 190 in the heating cup in the very bottom of the urn. I think this is why I even started to see some very minor localized boiling, but the time it took to get to that point was long enough that I should be done bottling long before this happens.


BrierPatch,
You mentioned the urn may drop into maintaining mode once I remove the heated water.

Close. I was meaning that it might cool enough to go back into boiling/percolating therefore boiling the sap and creating more niter, but like you said, I don't think it would boil for long as the urn is hot and the sap would be hot that you put in it, so I would think it would go into warming/hold mode pretty quick. Not like as if you put cold water in a cold urn.

[BrierPatch]

I read a thread where one man found numerous new urns failed to maintain over 145 degree in spite of company literature touting a higher temp.




So here is another piece to the puzzle. I was messing around with my coffee urn, since my season is over, and thought that it had broke because it would only get to 147 deg. now. It would make it to over 180 deg. when I was using it to bottle my syrup this season. Then I realized I didn't have the lid on it. When I put the lid on, the temp went up to 167 in just a little bit and I'm confident that it would have made it to 180 as usual. So I'm wondering if the poster that was testing these urns was doing it with the lids off. Just thought it was odd that mine would only get the same temp as described with the lid off.

On a side note the coffee urn worked great for bottling this year. Highly recommended for batch processors. I had no boiling and no niter form in it and it made pouring into bottles a breeze. I usually do about 1/2 gal to 1 gal of syrup at a time and it worked great!