I was perusing a catalogue in my local home brew shop recently and came
across an immersion heater that you basically plug in and drop in a
bucket. It was designed for beer use, but I was thinking of the
possibilities of using it for wine and mead. I usually only use enough
hot water to dissolve the sugar and, depending on the wine, cover the
fruit/vegetable matter for extraction. I would advise removing the
heater before adding sugar. My next batch of mead will probably use a
raw local honey so I could use it to heat water up enough to pasteurise
it, should I wish to do so.

Has anyone got any experience with these? Any other thoughts? It would
be a lot easier than filling up a few large pans for hot water, and it
was less than half the price of a 2 gallon kettle I was looking at
recently.