For those of you with plastic quick-disconnects...

I ordered some quick disconnects for my herms system from northern brewer, and when they got here, they had plastic crosses inside, partialy blocking the opening. I know these are supposed to be there, Im just wondering if anyone has had problems with these clogging with grain while recirculating the mash... In short, should I break them out or leave them be?

Just bought some Colder QD's myself. Test drilled out one set of cross pieces and it was a pain to do so using a regular bit. I will be drilling them all out using a drill press or something to make the job easier. Don't see them as being structural, only used in valving shutoff. I bought the straight through variety.

they clog, every time, without fail. i use a pair of needle nose angle cutters to get in there and take the majority of the cross hairs out. then i used my unibit and drilled out the inside to get rid of the rest. works a lot better now!

That kinda pisses me off, I mean, they are sold by a brewing warehouse, they should at least tell you that the cross pieces need to come out...

Thanks for the reply.

i bought mine at austin homebrew. when i did, they recommended i remove those. i did one brew with them still intact. when i tried to pump out of the boil kettle, it clogged within about 15 seconds. hop sludge does not like the crosshairs. it does work great now though!

I am using mine today for the first time. They work very well, no restriction when drilled out. I had a local machine shop do it on a lathe and it wound up costing me about $.70 per piece to have it cleaned up. No real problem with the March pumps either.

I removed them on mine. It certainly makes life easier, and didn't hurt them structurally at all.

I used the instructions on the morebeer forum. The dremel part numbers are included in the thread too. I used the ceramic stone and felt wheels mentioned, and it worked great. I did go through 2 ceramic bits though. The first one filled with plastic.

Morebeer's Brew Chat • View topic - Best way to remove + inside the plastic QDs?

Just a note though, make sure your disconnects don't have shutoff valves in them. If they have the valves, the X is needed to open them when they are connected. If they are flow-through disconnects, you should be able to remove the Xs without any problems. It took me an hour with the dremel to do about 20 pieces.

I picked up my QD's at LOWES $5.99 , all brass they are made for garden hose so i just got some GH to 1/2 barb connectors...all is well they dont leak at all and the diameter is a lot larger no clogging ether...

fireballbrewer said:

I picked up my QD's at LOWES $5.99 , all brass they are made for garden hose so i just got some GH to 1/2 barb connectors...all is well they dont leak at all and the diameter is a lot larger no clogging ether...

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I think that brass on those QD's (I use them on my garden hoses too) is kinda cheap, so I'd be sure to "pickle" them with hydrogen peroxide and vinegar just to make absolutely sure there's no trace surface lead. Hell, even with the relatively high-grade brass QD's from McM-C, I still pickle everything that comes into contact with my wort.