Placement of thermometer on HLT

So i'm building my HLT and was wondering where everybody places their thermometer. It will be directed fired too. I've seen many pics of keggles and it seems there is many options.

So where do you place yours and why?

Will there be any recirculation? A lot of RIMS/HERMS will put the probe on the ball valve outport.
If no recirc I think the most common locations for HLT probes are directly vertical or directly horizontal to the ball valve. I doubt either position has any significant benefits over the other.

Corey

It makes little to no difference except that your direct firing you may want to mount it higher on the kettle so it wont get damaged or effected by the heat

I use a keg for my HLT and I put the thermometer about half way between top and bottom. This means I need a minimum of 7.5 gallons in the HLT for the thermometer to read the temp. If I'm doing a 5 gal batch I may only need 7 or 8 gallons of water total. So after I add my 3 -4 gallons of strike water my water level is now below the thermometer. This means I have to add more water and heat up this entire volume to get my sparge water. If I had to do it over again I would put my thermometer as low as possible without having it to close to the bottom of a direct fired vessel as others have stated.

kerschup said:

If I had to do it over again I would put my thermometer as low as possible without having it to close to the bottom of a direct fired vessel as others have stated.

Click to expand...

I realize there is a variable of everybody's rig/system being different but is there a guideline that anybody knows about how low is too low (too close to the heat)? I think that's what the question is.

I would say 6" or so from the bottom would be fine. Mine is about that and it works fine. I checked it against a dairy floatey there and it was within a degree...

I ended up drilling the hole a little of to the right and about an inch higher then the valve. I wanted to leave room for a HERMS and with where I placed it I think I did.