IPAman

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I used my 15.5 g keggle for the first time yesterday, after several searches on making a dip tube I settled on a 1/2 copper bent 90 degrees in center of keg and added a SS mesh scrubbie at the bottom. Needless to say it did not work, it immediately clogged with sediment and no liquid exited the ball valve. (had hose going from ball valve to bottom of carboy to insure a syphon) I use pellet hops and saw a post during another search this morning that the mesh scrubbies do not work at all for pellets. Also, my chiller did not sit on the bottom of the keggle because of the copper tube and I feel impeded the cooling of the wort. Has anyone developed something that really works for them? am thinking of going down the side of the keggle instead of the center to allow the chiller to sit, but still not sure what is best method to screen out the sediment? I do like using hop pellets vs whole leaf, will a hop bag work with those? Thanks T.

MNBugeater

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A couple things to consider here..

The first would be a hop bag if you use pellets. Some say you dont get as good of utilization with the hop bag, but I don't think that is the case. If you find your utilization going down then just increase your normal hop amounts by 10%

Hop Bag - Home Brewing Wiki

Second would be to move the angled dip tube close to the side of your kettle so it just comes in a few inches and then bends down to the bottom of the kettle. You could also try something like this, but this would still interfere with your immersion chiller. You could fashion something similar and smaller that was closer to the side of the kettle.



More dip tube ideas...

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IPAman

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I see on your second dip tube it has no strainer attached does that pick up a lot of sediment?

GranillaNutz

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that second picture is my keggle. and yes it did get clogged with a lot of sediment the first time i used it, but that's cuz i used whole hops without a bag. it gave me hell for a little while during that brew, but it drained every drop out eventually. that's only 3/8 copper tubing as well. it works fine for me, now that i put my hops in a bag. that mesh screen is a good idea tho. i may have to upgrade to something like that.

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IPAman

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Thanks for the info, I wonder if you attach a screen (like a bazooka ) to the end of the tube if that would work filtering out ? T.

planenut

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Mine is like this and I use the scrubby with whole hops and have had no problems. I've only done this for about 3-4 batches though.

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