Hands On Review: Allied Precision 742G 1000 Watt Heat Stick with Temp Trial
Updated: July 18, 2024
What do heat sticks do?
Heat sticks help you… heat things. For homebrewing they are helpful for getting strike and sparge water up to temp and helping to more quickly achieve or maintain a boil. Depending on the heat stick and batch size, you could potentially use a heat stick as the sole source of heat from beginning to end.
Always use caution when handling hot items and when using water around electricity.
Make sure the components you use are compatible and rated for your intended application. Contact manufacturer with questions about suitability or a specific application. Always read and follow manufacturer directions.
Hands on Review: Allied Precision The Premier Line 742G Bucket Water Heater
Front of the box
Check Prices, Review Continues Below:
- Allied Precision The Premier Line 742G Bucket Water Heater, Electric Immersion Heating Element Heats 5 Gallons of Water in Minutes with Auto Shutoff, Submersible Design is Heavy Duty and Portable 120V – affiliate link, note that multiple variations of this product may be available, as such a different version may appear at this link
- Electric Bucket Heating Element – 1000 Watt Heat Stick BE440 – via MoreBeer – appears to be identical, but may be slightly different
What are Other’s Saying? Search this product’s Amazon reviews for “brew” – affiliate link, note that multiple variations of this product may be available, as such a different version may appear at this link
Disclaimer: Always use caution when handling hot items and when using water around electricity.
Make sure the components you use are compatible and rated for your intended application. Contact manufacturer with questions about suitability or a specific application. Always read and follow manufacturer directions.
This article contains affiliate links. We may make a small percentage if you use our links to make a purchase. You won’t pay more and you’ll be supporting Homebrew Finds and more content like this. Thank you for your support!
Close up Front Left Side
Close up Front Right Side
The Heat Stick
In all, this is about 17″ Long
The shield portion of the heat stick is right around 8″ This is the portion you are supposed to keep submerged in water while the heat stick is plugged in. The directions say that the unit cycles itself on and off, for safety, if the water level gets below 6″. Otherwise, the unit is constantly on.
Close up on the handle end of the heat stick.
Top down view of guard and element
Installed and working in my Blichmann BoilerMaker Kettle
Temperature Trial
To test this out, I put 5 gallons of cold side tap water into a 6 gallon-ish kettle.
I used my ThermoWorks ChefAlarm Thermometer and Timer (Review) to track progress. This thermometer tracks both min and max temps, has a built in timer and has an available waterproof probe. I also used the alarm feature to let me alert me to notable progress points. My tap water came in at 66.9 degrees F.
The probe wire going into the kettle
The water hit 80.9 deg F (+14 deg F) in right about 10 minutes. Average increase: 1.4 deg F per Minute.
The water hit 100.5 deg F (+33.6 deg F) in 22 minutes. Average increase: 1.53 deg F per Minute.
The water hit 160.5 deg F (+93.6 deg F) in about 1 hour and 10 minutes. This is notable because, depending on your beer and mash profile, we’re getting close to strike water temperature. Average increase: 1.33 deg F per Minute.
The water hit 200.1 deg F (+130.2 deg F) in about 2 hours and 13 minutes. Average increase: .98 deg F per Minute.
Conclusions
I have used this to get a head start on my strike water, mash water and sparge water. Doing this, helps me save propane, time and money.
This also help me out in cold weather brewing, because I can leave my garage door closed longer. Using this, I don’t need to fire up my propane burner until just before sparging.
This doesn’t have enough power to easily bring a full 5 gallon batch to a boil. But it does have plenty of power to help speed things along and could potentially be a single heat source for small batch brewers.
What are Other’s Saying? Search this product’s Amazon reviews for “brew” – affiliate link, note that multiple variations of this product may be available, as such a different version may appear at this link
Check Prices:
- Allied Precision The Premier Line 742G Bucket Water Heater, Electric Immersion Heating Element Heats 5 Gallons of Water in Minutes with Auto Shutoff, Submersible Design is Heavy Duty and Portable 120V – affiliate link, note that multiple variations of this product may be available, as such a different version may appear at this link
- Electric Bucket Heating Element – 1000 Watt Heat Stick BE440 – via MoreBeer – appears to be identical, but may be slightly different
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greatdealsAlways use caution when handling hot items and when using water around electricity.
Make sure the components you use are compatible and rated for your intended application. Contact manufacturer with questions about suitability or a specific application. Always read and follow manufacturer directions. tag:lnksfxd review:ap742g tag:tpr
Anyone ever tried hooking this up to temperature controller? Seems like a great way to hold your HLT temps.
I bought one of these to supplement my home setup. I use an electric stove, and it takes about an hour and a half to get my wort runnings to a flaccid boil. With such a long time to get to the hot break, my beer was turning out cloudy. My first batch with this stick, I used it to heat my mash water and added it to my boil kettle on the stove. After runnings, I got to a rolling boil in under 40 minutes. My brew is crystal clear now.
May I ask how many gallons you were brewing on the stovetop? Thanks for your response!
I’ll be buying one to use in my laundry tub that I soak bottles in. This way I can soak bottles all day long without the PBW getting cold.
How well would this work by keeping a mash tun at the right temperature?
Unless you’re using it in conjunction with some sort of a RIMS/HERMS system, I don’t think it would work. I think it would scorch the grain.
It would be nice to have something like this, hung off a controller, to keep the mash at or around temp x.
Any thoughts on buying two of these and heating up that water twice as fast? It would put you at 200 in about an hour, comparable to i’d guess a 40000btu propane burner.
Would be pretty easy to wire up a ranco or stc1000 and adjust for exact mash temps
I think that could work pretty dandy. The one thing, I’d be interested to know is if a single/standard breaker would support two of these on the same breaker. If the answer is no, then you’d just need to make sure they two were plugged into separate breakers.
Two of these devices running on a single 15amp breaker would blow it for sure. You could get away with a 20amp breaker if it were the ONLY things plugged in (and you had a strong/solid breaker. 30 amp breaker would be fine.
It would appear that it is just fine if you are making beer for your horses per the pictures on the box. Of course, whiskey for the men, beer for the horses.
That’s what I’ve been trying to say all along! 🙂
I use this in similar fashion as you do. I use this in a cooler to heat my entire mash and sparge water. It is very handy since this can be in a cooler at the top of a gravity fed system, which is much easier than having a propane burner mounted up high.
Also with the addition of a simple timer, I can have it set to turn on early in the morning and have all my water ready by the time I wake up.
The heater didn’t melt any part of your cooler?
I keep reading comments online about this element and its use with drinking water. No where does it say it is dangerous for drinking water but rather, that it is untested. Any comments or concerns regarding this?