Looking for some Keggle advise

As the title states, Im looking for a little advice for my keggle. I just cut the lid of yesterday...





Now what.


Basically heres what I want to do. I want to switch to all grain. I want to switch to electric. I dont have a coil, control box, or 220 in my garage yet. So as of right now Im probaly going to stick with propane. I have a turkey fryer that I have used for my last batch and the two other batches were done on my kitchen stove. All three have been extract. For some reason I thought i was going to use this Keggle as a MT and boil pot but now that I think about it, I cant do both. So should I A.) make a cooler MT and just use this as a boil pot like I wanted to do from the begining, heat strike water in it then sparge water. or B.) Use this as a MT and keep on using my turkey pot till I switch over to electic and then get another keg. This forum is really nice, BUT The more I read, the more confused and crazier my ideas are getting.

Use your turkey fryer pot for heating strike and sparge. Use the cooler for the mash tun. Use the keggle for boil. That's what I would do anyway.

If it were me, and a few months ago it was, I would build a 10gal cooler MT. Use the keggle as your HLT and BK for now, and when you get another keg you can have both an HLT and BK. If you want to go electric you won't be direct firing your MT, and in my opinion that is the only reason to use a keg for a MT. You can outfit this keggle with a ball valve, sight glass, and whatever else you want and use it on a gas burner, then when ready to go electric just drill for the element.

I plan on a three keg system, but for now I purchased a biab bag and do everything in one keg. I outfitted the keg with a false bottom to keep the bag off the bottom while boiling. I'll need the false bottom in the future anyway so... Also have thermometer, valve and sight glass installed.

The beer I've made biab has been awesome. It was fairly cheap to get going, and the process is simple.

Sometimes I wonder why I want to go further and spend more money. But what the heck, it's all so much fun!

Is there any specific location I should put the ball valve and sight glass?

JRems said:

Use yo urour turkey fryer pot for heating strike and sparge. Use the cooler for the mash tun. Use the keggle for boil. That's what I would do anyway.

Click to expand...

I do the same thing it works great!

Make sure when you put in your valve that you put it on the side with the handle that way you can grab the handle on the opposite side to pour the last bit of wort out (I don't have a dip tube inside mine but tipping works great) also very important, if the keg has any holes around the bottom perimeter you need to situate the valve so that if flames come out of those holes during boil it won't melt the rubber on your handle!

Note the position of the handle and valve. hope this helps

Cool thanks for the picture. Should the sight glass be installed at about the same distance from the bottom

It depends on what sight glass design you have. If it's one of mine, it will install pretty low due to the angle put on the tubing to compensate for the curve of the keg. If the tubing is straight on the fitting (someone else's design), you'll want to go high enough that the surface is plumb, otherwise the tube sticks out up top.