How do the sightgauges work?

Do these work by installing onto your kettle and then writing your own markings on them to determine how much liquid is in the kettle? Since everyones brew pot is going to be different such as different containers and location of hole drilled.

And I am guessing these cant be used on the mash tun since the grains will skew the measurement?

Yes most of the sight glasses you have to mark with a sharpie
the increments you want. It could be done on a mash tun using
a filter or screen but ive never seen it done.

meluvbeer said:

It could be done on a mash tun using
a filter or screen but ive never seen it done.

Click to expand...

Actually, I don't believe that is true. The grains will displace too much water to make a sight glass accurate (I believe that's what the OP meant). Further, depending on the recipe, there will be a different displacement so you can't account for it.

Regardless - Why would you need a sight gauge on a mash tun? If you have one on your HLT that's all you need. Never do you need to know the volume in the tun, just the volume you're putting in.

My MLT has a sightglass on it but it's not really necessary. When I had a big ol' burner under it, I was able to put the strike water directly into the MLT using the sight to know how full to make it, and heat the water directly (saves the effort of one pumping operation.. Now that my MLT burner is weak, I fill the HLT, then deductively fill the MLT from there.

meluvbeer said:

It could be done on a mash tun using
a filter or screen but ive never seen it done.

Click to expand...

My MiniMash Lauter Tun has one and I use it to put the correct amount of strike water in before starting the mash. It's also useful for fly sparging since you can easily adjust the sparge by looking at the liquid level... liquid goes up, open the valve a bit more, liquid goes down, close the valve a bit.

JVD_X said:

My MiniMash Lauter Tun has one and I use it to put the correct amount of strike water in before starting the mash. It's also useful for fly sparging since you can easily adjust the sparge by looking at the liquid level... liquid goes up, open the valve a bit more, liquid goes down, close the valve a bit.

Click to expand...

Yeh, I didn't think about it this way. I guess it would make sense to have a sight gauge on your MLT if you put the water in first. I don't do it that way, so it didn't occur to me!

I use the sight guage on my mash tun to see the level while sparging. The only issue is that some of the times it can clog with grain. Not always though. Any ideas on how to install a screen?