The heat loss with the Braumeister is huge and hurts both your electricity bill and brewing time
As the thermocollar is quite pricey ($100), you can improvise a cheaper alternative with a foam camping pad with aluminum lining
which gives great results
Make sure to put the aluminum face inside to prevent the pad from burning near the heating coil
Cut 5″x1.2″ (13cm x 3cm) holes for the handles. That’s 3″ (7.5cm) from the top on the 20L version
Speed up
If you find the rise time to a boil too long, you can speed things up by doubling the power of your Braumeister with a portable water heater
This typically cuts rise time in half
If you use a 50L Braumeister, which has a 4000W heating element, just make sure your power socket can handle 4KW + 2KW for the portable water heater, because that’s a lot of amps (~20A) and it would suck to blow a fuse on a brew session