Electric or gas or both?

[Beardy]

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As for the cost of gas going up as it becomes harder to find. I think I''m right in saying 50% of our electric is currently produced in Gas fired Power stations so you are going to be seeing price rises either way.

_*Politics alert*_

Indeed, a large portion of our electricity is now produced by burning gas and it is this the is causing the need for us to import gas and why the gas price is on the up. It was a political decision reached with the aid of the lobbyists after a previous political decision sold off the power generating in the uk. Trough, snout, pigs???

[Kev888]

Just been wandering through threads investigating the relative real-world heating rates vs powers I can find; electricity is fairly consistent but gas seems very variable indeed - I guess alot comes down to the burner, its positioning, any shrouds and probably how much its turned up. But in all cases I saw the gas clearly is less efficient than electricity, probably on average (very roughly) about 1/3rd in the threads I found.

Not necessarily a problem as gas burners are more powerful at quite reasonable prices, but it helps work out what sort of element(s) are on an equivalent to what sort of burner. Theres such a wide variation with gas though that its a bit difficult to say how useful this actually is. Probably gas could be made much better with big shrouds around the copper too, but most people seem to be using fairly small ones just around the base.

Cheers,
Kev

[stevetk189]

When I was setting up my brewing gear I read far too many posts related to brewdays going well "apart from the electric element packing up" part way through the boil. Since then I've read a lot more and the subject of dodgy elements seems to crop up regularly. I might consider using an electric element in my HLT but certainly not my boiler.

I use gas, the burner isn't quiet but it's not exactly loud either. The bottles aren't such a big deal to bring in or out and you can easily tell roughly how much is left in them. My advantage is we have to use bottled gas in the house as we have no mains gas supply so there's always a spare bottle somewhere that could be hooked up should either the gas run out mid boil or if it feels like there isn't enough gas to begin with.

I think it's the same as anything though really, people have their own preference and I am out of touch with the price of gas in the UK these days. Here in France to swap a bottle - the mid sized ones, not sure what volume they are, 32kg I think - costs 28,50 Euro which is about £25.00. I've not actually yet been able to dedicate one bottle to brewing only so I can't really tell accurately how many brews I get from a bottle.