Controlling the boil....

[TrickyDick]

Hello,

Brewed my first beer on my electric brew system this past Sunday. I wanted to keep it simple for the first brew since I knew I would be learning a lot about using my new setup. I decided to buy a pre-fab panel rather than try to build my own with high voltage in the mix. I have a 5000 watt element in the boil kettle and had some questions about how to regulate the intensity of the boil with the BCS. My panel came pre programmed with a boil process.
The first state is bring to boil, which seems to run the element at 100% until the temp probe hits 212°. After that it seems to hit a pause with buzzer alert for first hop addition (the next state), then proceeds with the boil using a "duty cycle" mode to limit power to the element. What I noticed was that the boil had subdued into a less than simmering status at that point. The value in the table next to the duty cycle was 8. I tried to look up on the wiki about what the value here represents, but what I found wasn't helpful. I ended up slowly increasing this value on a trial and error basis until what I saw in the kettle was an appropriately intense boil. I forgot the value 58 or 85 I think. Can someone explain this duty cycle to me please? Also, I'd be interested to hear what others are doing to regulate the intensity of their boil. I have learned that in propane brewing, that unless you have brewed the same batch multiple times, with different boil intensity , that you probably aren't boiling as intensely as you should.

Thanks
TD

[JonW]

From the docs: http://docs.embeddedcc.com/process_edit ... ng-a-state

In Duty Cycle mode, the Setpoint column is used to set the percentage of time of the duty cycle that the output will be turned on. The duty cycle setpoint is a percentage of the configured Output Period that is configured for the selected output under PID Settings on the Settings page.

You may also want to reference the section in the Settings page that discusses the PID output period as it relates to Duty Cycle.
http://docs.embeddedcc.com/settings/