Call me crazy but I’m currently using my anova as a water bath for a beer wort fermenting in my basement. I decided to do this because no where in my house is consistantly 74 degrees in the winter. The Sous Vide to the rescue!
So the question. How many hours should one run their sous vide consecutively? Beers ferment for around a week at a time. Could you run the sous vide that long without giving it a rest?
I intend on turning it off when we are home, which is when the house is the warmest, and turn it on at night and while I"m at work. Should give it a 5hr rest but does mean it’s running 19 hours at a time.
Surprised no-one’s offered any opinions. There’s lots of people that do cooks up to 72 hours (I’m thinking ribs). As with anything, I’m sure that the PC’s are designed for a finite life span (so many thousands hours of use). I think using it the way that you are over the course of a week (with giving it a break) is fine. 74F is also a pretty easy temperature for it to maintain, so the wear and tear on the heating element is minimal.
I have on several occasions run mine for a week straight with no breaks. I have no idea if I’m shortening the lifespan doing this, but I’ve had no issues so far.
I’m also planning to use my Anova as a water bath to keep my beer brewing at 70 degrees, as we keep our house cooled to about 62 degrees. Willburn: Did the Anova keep your beer at 75 as you hoped it would? Does anyone else have any recommendations?
If you insulate the vessel that you’re using (even wrapping it in a quilt or a few blankets) when you give the Anova a break, then you’ll considerably minimize the temperature fluctuation while it’s off.
(thinking you can leave it off for as little as 6-8 hours and it should be good to kick off the second leg of your cook).
But, as others have stated, they’ve run for a week without issue (and this is a very low temperature, so not working the heating element in the Anova much at all).
Steven: Can I plug the Anova into a standard timer that will turn it off for a few hours every day to give it a rest – such as a timer that controls Christmas Tree lights – or do I need a more heavyier-duty timer?
@acs is right. The Anova does not resume your cook after a power outage. (this is intentional - so people don’t get sick, not knowing that their food cooled during a cook).
And, yes, there’s been several of us ask the developers for a scheduler for the Anova (so, that IS on their feature “wish list” already)
I really wouldn’t turn it off for a few hours every day…it’s designed to cook for many hours, over several days - just their advice is to usually let it rest after 3-4 days.
I’d just let it rest up 6-8 hours in the middle of your week-long cook…but, again, others have run theirs for a week without issue (and the temperature IS low). It’s really just the circulation motor that is being worked significantly for that time.
I have heard the concept of resting an electronic device before and I am baffled by it. Rest normally implies that something is healing during the down time. We rest our muscles after a vigorous workout to let them heal and rebuild. Nothing in the Anova that I know of is capable of healing during the rest time. As long as the design parameters are not exceeded I do not see why something cannot run continuously. Starting and stopping are normally more damaging to electronics than steady state operation.
All of that aside, I think a direct contact carboy heater or one of the honey heater blankets with an external temp control would be more efficient. Or build an insulated cabinet with both a heater or even just a 100W light bulb and a small AC unit. Dial your temp in for the fermentation, you can build it big enough for a few pails or carboys and then you can use it to crash and even lager if you want.
Again, I’m not really evangelizing the whole “rest period” thing. That came from Bill…and I’m not an Anova staffer…so I don’t quite have the relationship with their engineering team that he does. heh
Only thing in this circumstance that you would be “resting” would be the motor that drives the impeller. Whatever the MTBF calculation would be for that electric motor, no doubt accumulated heat load would play into it…so, allowing the motor to reduce heat for a brief period before kicking off the next cycle of 72hrs+?
Someone tag a mechanical engineer…maybe there’s some volumes on this that they could illuminate us on.
There’s lots of people that do cooks up to 72 hours (I’m thinking ribs). As with anything, I’m sure that the PC’s are designed for a finite life span (so many thousands hours of use). I think using it the way that you are over the course of a week (with giving it a break) is fine. 74F is also a pretty easy temperature for it to maintain, so the wear and tear on the heating element is minimal. 
heh