I have been brewing 5gal crystal + DME batches for several years on my wife's electric kitchen range and it needs to be replaced , mostly due to my 7 gal brewpot. I also wanted to be able to boil in my basement so that I didn't have to carry the brewpot down the stairs to cool. Also I wanted to continue to use electric heat.
About a month ago I read a couple of threads in this newsgroup on Electric Turkey Fryers and decided to follow up. It seemed like a good way for me to go so I bought one . The volume is nominally 28 quarts and the heating element is immersion and 1650 watts. It has a relatively coarse temperature control which is of limited use and has a double wall consruction which keeps the outside cool.
In using it I first attached it to a Brewers Edge Controller 2 and this worked well to hold 154-158F so that I could introduce and sparge the crystal. However, on going up to boiling it shut off at 212F and I could not get a good rolling boil. I therfore removed it and controlled the boiling by adjusting how much I opened the lid.
DME and hops were added as I would with the stove top pot and at the end of the boil I removed the heating element and put in the copper chilling coil. Cooling was a little slower due to the double wall construction but I dont think that this is a problem.
Clean up was easier than with the stove top as there was no carmelized material sticking to the base. My impression is that the wort is cleaner and lighter than I used to produce. This brew had 8lbs DME and I plan to use higher and lower levels in the near future.
I hope that this info helps some of the people who got my attention to turkey fryers about a month ago in this newsgroup. Cheers BoB Grierson