I should punch myself

For not filling my keggle with water first to check where to place the temp gauge. Hindsight truly is 20/20.

Story behind my keg I was converting for a boil kettle: Last night I decided to sit down, drill my keg and start installing the spigot, sight tube and thermometer. I get the thermo and spigot installed and they looked all nice and purty lined up vertically. Went to install the sight glass but realized i needed a cap. Quick trip to Lowe's with a buddy and returned to work. We got to thinking and decided to fill the keg with some water to see where about the temp gauge was situated.

Turns out I installed the f-ing thing to high I wanted to use the keg for both 5 and 10 gal boils, but with 6.5gals of water in the keg, the thermo was barely under the water level. Question about this though.. i know that when water heats up to boiling, it will expand. How much will it expand? Also, how much would adding DME/LME increase the water level?

I'm just curious because I think it may still work out, but I wanted to make sure the temp gauge was in a good position incase I decided to steep grains in the keggle.

Think this will still work out for a boil kettle once the water is warmed up and extract is added?

I also have 2 other kegs, but this one was the best looking one. I was thinking of just turning this one into a HLT or MLT, but I'm not sure where the grain level would be for a MLT, and with a HLT I would need to add atleast 6.5gal to even start getting a good temp reading.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

On a positive note, nothing leaked once filled up and got to finish my night off with a wonderful 08 Stone RIS.

I made the same mistake. First keg:



Following three:

Yup, you're following three will be how I do my others.

I was worried about the temp gauge getting to hot if it was near the bottom so I placed it on top of the spigot. Ooops!!

Any idea what I should do with this one?

Glad to see I'm not the only one, although it's still a bit frusterating. Your temp gauge housing is almost exactly where I put mine..lol

Bobby, you're a madman. 4!? Wanna sell me one, you bastard!?

Not sure why you want a thermo in your boil kettle, anyway? (I know you said "in case" you steep grains, but is that something you do often with full-boil batches?)

I had one in my kettle, and was never using it. Replaced it with a SS plug.

Oh, and BTW mine was also in a similar location The place I got it said that was the "standard" location, and I didn't know any better to tell them I wanted it somewhere non-standard...

Bike N Brew said:

Not sure why you want a thermo in your boil kettle, anyway? ...

Click to expand...

I was wondering this myself.

I can see the need for one if you cooled the wort in the kettle or recirculated or something. Is there another use?

I'm just curious, thanks.

Bike N Brew said:

Not sure why you want a thermo in your boil kettle, anyway? (I know you said "in case" you steep grains, but is that something you do often with full-boil batches?)

I had one in my kettle, and was never using it. Replaced it with a SS plug.

Oh, and BTW mine was also in a similar location The place I got it said that was the "standard" location, and I didn't know any better to tell them I wanted it somewhere non-standard...

Click to expand...

Steeping grain is probably something I won't be doing often since I'm moving to PM and eventually AG, but the idea of having it there just incase seemed like a good idea.

Where did you get the SS plug? Maybe I'll just plug it up and relocate the hole to a lower location. At this point I'm leaning towards just plugging it, or using it as a MLT, but I'm not sure what the average grain bill + water would put the level at inside the keg.

Beerthoven said:

I was wondering this myself.

I can see the need for one if you cooled the wort in the kettle or recirculated or something. Is there another use?

I'm just curious, thanks.

Click to expand...

The wort will be cooled in the kettle.

riored4v said:

The wort will be cooled in the kettle.

Click to expand...

Makes perfect sense, then. Thanks!

No problem. I shoulda mentioned that when I first posted it to avoid confusion.

Wish I could figure out something I could do to utilize the drilled hole. I don't mind plugging it, but I wanted it to be clean looking and the plug wouldn't help that.

Call this funny, but could you put a valve on your extraneous hole and let your wort from the MLT pour in? This of course assumes it's high enough.

I know you'd leave some wort in your hose, but better than nothing, especially if you've got a setup already in place for your lower valve. Then, when you boil, the wort line'll go below the valve. This doesn't sound like it'd work too well with 10 gallon batches though.

riored4v said:

Where did you get the SS plug?

Click to expand...

Don't remember

Probably a little hole-in-the wall plumbing shop near my old workplace. Maybe HD or Lowe's though.

My thermo fitting is a 1/2" NPT bulkhead; just picked up a plug like these View attachment 4873
at one of those places. Found them online here

ClutchDude said:

Call this funny, but could you put a valve on your extraneous hole and let your wort from the MLT pour in? This of course assumes it's high enough.

I know you'd leave some wort in your hose, but better than nothing, especially if you've got a setup already in place for your lower valve. Then, when you boil, the wort line'll go below the valve. This doesn't sound like it'd work too well with 10 gallon batches though.

Click to expand...

Yea, that would work fine for a 5gal batch since it's about the right height for that. But as you said, for a 10gal batch it probably wouldnt work out to well..lol

Bike N Brew said:

Don't remember

Probably a little hole-in-the wall plumbing shop near my old workplace. Maybe HD or Lowe's though.

My thermo fitting is a 1/2" NPT bulkhead; just picked up a plug like these View attachment 4873
at one of those places. Found them online here

Click to expand...

Thanks.

My thermo doesn't have a bulkhead that I remember, so I'll see what I can assemble from one of the local stores.

At this point it seems that the position of the thermo is to high for anything I would be able to use for 5gal batches, but would be perfect for 10gal. So I'll either be dumping this keg and will use a cooler for a MLT (and use my other 2 for a HLT and boil kettle), or will just suck it up, plug it, deal with it being ugly and use it.

I eventually sold that first keg to Soulive, not in a "stick you with a thermo bulkhead that is too high" kind of way, but just because I built 3 identical vessels for my brewstand. One thing you can do with that bulkhead is run a whirlpooling diverter pipe on the inside and pump back into the kettle through there while you're IC chilling.

There are two reasons I want a thermo in the boil kettle. One is rather obvious in that it tells me at a glance how close I am to boiling. If it says 185F, I know I can walk away and do a few tasks. If it's 205, I know I need to stick around to take note of the boil start time.

The second reason was already mentioned and that's when chilling. I don't IC chill anymore (though I'll never say never) but if you do, it's gonna tell you when to stop chilling. Even with an external exchanger like a CFC or plate, you might want to recirculate it back into the kettle for bulk cooling or headstart cooling when using icewater.

I guess a third reason is that a third thermo was only going to be another $10 factoring in shipping. Why not.

Good thought on the whirlpool, I'll have to remember that.

I really like the cut-job I did on this keg, and it was the least dented one so I decided to just roll with this one. I went to Lowe's and picked up a SS Bolt, some SS nuts and a few o-rings and made a plug.

Now with your suggestion, if I ever get around to acquiring a pump, I'll just unplug it, find a bulkhead and some tubing and use it for whirlpooling.

The plug turned out looking decent. I might cut the bolt down inside the keg, although it's only sticking into the keg about 1/2-3/4"