OT-Sous vide unit recommendations

alaskanassasin said:

JohnInCarolina said:

alaskanassasin said:

Follow up to using Sous vide for the purpose of liquefying set up honey.  It works great for pints and small containers at 110 degrees. 

     I had a 5 gallon bucket in a 20 gallon pot at 110 degrees for about 3 days and it never liquefied completely, not sure why so I will stick with the bucket blanket. 

   Also I tried to melt 4 gallons of wax using the same set up at 170 degrees but the sous vide could never get there, it hovered around 165.  I will try it again with a 10 gallon pot and maybe wrap it in a blanket. 

Did you have a cover over the bath?  If you don't, the evaporative cooling that occurs off the top of the bath makes it very difficult to get up to higher-range temps, in my experience.  

no cover, that is a good idea though, I could make something out of scrap plywood.

An even easier solution is just to cover the surface with ping pong balls, if you have enough.

JohnInCarolina said:

alaskanassasin said:

JohnInCarolina said:

alaskanassasin said:

Follow up to using Sous vide for the purpose of liquefying set up honey.  It works great for pints and small containers at 110 degrees. 

     I had a 5 gallon bucket in a 20 gallon pot at 110 degrees for about 3 days and it never liquefied completely, not sure why so I will stick with the bucket blanket. 

   Also I tried to melt 4 gallons of wax using the same set up at 170 degrees but the sous vide could never get there, it hovered around 165.  I will try it again with a 10 gallon pot and maybe wrap it in a blanket. 

Did you have a cover over the bath?  If you don't, the evaporative cooling that occurs off the top of the bath makes it very difficult to get up to higher-range temps, in my experience.  

no cover, that is a good idea though, I could make something out of scrap plywood.

An even easier solution is just to cover the surface with ping pong balls, if you have enough.

 An EVEN easier (easierer?) solution is bubble wrap type of stuff, that comes in all of those Amazon boxes. 

What sous vide unit are you using @alaskanassasin? The Anova or Joule units kinda peak when circulating 30ish quarts of water. If you're circulating larger volumes, you'll likely get better results with more than one circulator.