help turning keg into brew kettle

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NewJersey

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so i acquired a beautiful ss sam keg yesterday and have a buddy who is a professional welder. my question is where you guys reccomend buying the bungs to weld in and at what heights do they get welded in?
i only wanna have a spigot at the bottom that i can screw a screen into and one a lil higher up to have a thermometer in.
i plan to mash in it with my same bayou burner i use for 5 gallon batches. batch sparge in it, (run the wort out into my two pots i use for 5 gallon batches) clean it out quickly, and then do the boil in it. After the boil i would just split the wort into two carboys or buckets to ferment, and later into two cornys.
suggestions?
 
also curious what kind of immersion chiller you guys use in these?
with my copper coil ic in the keggle i think it will sit too low in the wort and the plastic hose will also be submerged
 
I deliberately made my copper IC so that there is no copper sticking up out of the wort, which is a waste of copper. I use silicone hose which has no problem with boiling temperatures.

Are you going to brew 10-gallon batches? Because if you aren't used to a keggle, you might be surprised how low the liquid level is. It's only about a foot high for a 5-gallon batch. I re-wound my copper IC to be double-coiled because at 50 feet, it was too tall for my keggle.
 
If you had another keg, you could make the copper IC as noted above. Make it removable and use it as a HERMS coil during the mash by placing it in the HLT and recirculating your mash through it.
 
i don't even know what HERMS is yet. yes, i want to start brewing 10 gallon batches.
i am actually already leaning towards getting another keg and am actually currently on the stainless brewing website eyeing up the hop spider and dry hopper. dry hopping right in my cornys would skip a step. downside is i would need two of the dryhopper for 10 gallon batches.
decisions decisons
 
I have a dry hopper from StainlessBrewing.com LOVE IT. What I do is purge the kegs with CO2 and transfer to them then dry hop in one while the other is just sitting there under pressure. Not enough to carbonate it, but enough to seat all the seals. I just pull the dry hopper out and Carb the first keg while the second keg is dry hoping with a new batch of hops in it.
 
Oh... and HERMS is nothing more than a Heat Exchanging Recirculating Mash System. You pump wort from the Mash Tun through the coil inside the Hot Liquor Tank and it matches the temp of the Hot Liquor and then goes back into the Mash to maintain a steady heat in the grain bed.
 
why couldnt you carbonate it while dry hopping simeltaneously?
after 10 days (3 at 30psi 7 at 10psi) my beers are always done carbing up.
why couldnt i just pull the dry hopper out then, close the corny back up, and get it into my kegerator and throw on at 10psi?
after a couple days to chill out, my beer would be ready to drink.
i almost always only primary for 7 days (depends on OG and i, of course, check to see if the FG reading is on target)
so 7 days primary and 10 days secondary/carbonating is 17 days instead of the 25-27 i'm used to.
i have 5 tabs open right now just getting my purchases straight.
im lucky to be getting the kegs themselves for almost free.
i wish i had just started with 10 gallon batches to begin with. oddly enough it would have been cheaper for me. weird.
 
Just don't want to open a carbonated keg... Have you ever opened a carbonated keg? I haven't, and I don't want to.
i havent ever done this and dont see what kind of terrible thing would happen if i did. if you release the pressure and wait a couple minutes i would imagine its fine. no? something i'm missing?
 
As soon as you release the pressure, you will be allowing a LOT of CO2 to come out of solution. Especially if you have to slowly pull the dry-hopper out to let it drain a little. This will agitate it so much I am afraid it would cause an eruption of foam.
 
i wonder if anyone has actually done this before. first experience would be better than us guessing
would it be ok to just leave the hops in the whole time until the keg is kicked?
 
well then, i think i will give my carbing while dry hopping idea a shot. hopefully i dont have a ton of beer exploding outta my corny. wish me luck
 
Sight glass, once properly calibrated, is an AWESOME thing to have on a boil kettle. There are other means by which you can measure... i.e. a notched stir stick... but I would MUCH rather have a sight glass. You can get instant feedback on your sparge volume as well as boil-off. Just take in account that your volume will increase quite a bit (like a half gallon) from sparge temp to boil temp. So if you want to end up with 12 gallons you need to stop boiling at 12.5 gallons.
 
Just don't want to open a carbonated keg... Have you ever opened a carbonated keg? I haven't, and I don't want to.

Yes. Many, many times.

i havent ever done this and dont see what kind of terrible thing would happen if i did. if you release the pressure and wait a couple minutes i would imagine its fine. no? something i'm missing?

Nothing terrible happens. The only thing that happens is you get a little fog layer of CO2, just like uncapping a beer bottle.

As soon as you release the pressure, you will be allowing a LOT of CO2 to come out of solution. Especially if you have to slowly pull the dry-hopper out to let it drain a little. This will agitate it so much I am afraid it would cause an eruption of foam.

Uh. No. Where in the world did you get this crazy idea from? The beer sits still when you open a carbed keg. I did it yesterday. Pulling the hops bag out made it do abso-freaking-lutely-nothing.

i wonder if anyone has actually done this before. first experience would be better than us guessing
would it be ok to just leave the hops in the whole time until the keg is kicked?

Yes. I've done it many times. It's fine.

You will start getting a lot of grassy taste after 2 weeks of dry hopping.

I'm at 14 days right now with 4 ounces of Centennial in the dry hop bag and have zero grassy taste.

If you're worried about it, either pull them out at 2 weeks or hang them high enough that they'll suspend above the liquid when you get below a certain level.

well then, i think i will give my carbing while dry hopping idea a shot. hopefully i dont have a ton of beer exploding outta my corny. wish me luck

The only downside is that dry hopping while carbing means you're at serving temperatures instead of secondary temperatures, making it take much longer to impart the dryhop flavor.

I have opened a carbonated keg.
Nothing exciting happened.

Exactly.
 
I open carbonated kegs all the time to dry hop them. I brew 25 gallon batches so I have 5 kegs filled and pressurized. If it is a style that needs dry hopping I don't want to do them all at once or by the time I get to the last one it will be a waste of hops so I dry hop as needed. I relieve the pressure, drop my sack of hops in and then purge the head space. No problems!!
 
"The only downside is that dry hopping while carbing means you're at serving temperatures instead of secondary temperatures, making it take much longer to impart the dryhop flavor."

I dropped a half ounce of amarillo into my corny keg and got some pretty good flavor after 2 hours. I weight the bag so it sits on the bottom of the keg and the beer is drawn through it on the way out, so I don't know how (or if) that helps the process.
 
Uh. No. Where in the world did you get this crazy idea from? The beer sits still when you open a carbed keg. I did it yesterday. Pulling the hops bag out made it do abso-freaking-lutely-nothing.

Like I said... I have never done it. I was just going off the logic of opening a bottle of beer and pouring it. Then if you stir up with, say, a spoon... you rouse the head. My thought was logical. I just happen to not have experienced opening a carbonated keg. I stand corrected. Now, get down off my back man.

Cheers.:mug:
 
image-126371340.jpg

Here is a pick of a Brewhardware.com sight glass and thermometer combo in my BK. I love them, I also have one in my HLT. I have dip tubes in both.


image-2089436952.jpg

And here is my 1/2"x50' IC, I added legs so it sits above my dip tube. I also used 1/2" rigid with 90* bends so I wasn't trying to make the bends myself and kink it. Got that from Coppertubingsales.com as a kit.


image-2834216760.jpg
 
The dip tube is there so you can siphon/pump out almost all the liquid. This will just leave about a 1/4 inch or so of liquid in the bottom of the keggle. If you don't have it, then your liquid level will never drop below the opening where your side wall valve is... thus, leaving about 2-3 gallons of wort behind.
You could bottom drain and not have to worry about a dip tube.
 
Because the dip tube will make it a lot easier to drain. Keggle's become very hard to handle when full of wort.

And blistering hot, in the range of 400F+ on the bottom.

Didn't think I needed a diptube either, until I went to tip the keggle over, grabbed the bottom lip, and burned the bejesus out of my hand in a fraction of a second. Thankfully my hand was wet from handling the garden hose, or my skin would have stuck to and remained on the bottom of the keggle.

The next day, I made sure one got installed.
 
lol, what?
you would only be leaning it over when its near empty anyway. That and grabbing it from the top- problem solved. right?
i'm not trying to be a wiseass, but i'd rather have a screen down there instead of a diptube to filter out the grain and some of the hops after the boil. I have one floor burner which i plan on using with two keggles. Im not gonna build some kinda stand or use pumps or whatever. after mashing in one keggle i would then have a friend help me lift the thing onto a ss table i have thats 2 feet from the burner and let it drain into the other keggle to do the boil.
i want a nice simple setup and don't see the point of the diptube or sight glass.
after the boil i would put the keggle on the same table (after having my ic take it down to 75*) put on a silicone hose and drain the wort into two plastic buckets (each with a hop strainer bag deal over the bucket), pitch yeast and clean up.
 
lol, what?
you would only be leaning it over when its near empty anyway. That and grabbing it from the top- problem solved. right?

Sure. Whatever floats your boat.

Why ask the purpose of something, then get upset when the answer is given to you?

i'm not trying to be a wiseass, but i'd rather have a screen down there instead of a diptube to filter out the grain and some of the hops after the boil. I have one floor burner which i plan on using with two keggles. Im not gonna build some kinda stand or use pumps or whatever. after mashing in one keggle i would then have a friend help me lift the thing onto a ss table i have thats 2 feet from the burner and let it drain into the other keggle to do the boil.
i want a nice simple setup and don't see the point of the diptube or sight glass.
after the boil i would put the keggle on the same table (after having my ic take it down to 75*) put on a silicone hose and drain the wort into two plastic buckets (each with a hop strainer bag deal over the bucket), pitch yeast and clean up.

I'm not reading this jumble.

Best of luck.

Heavens to Murgatroyd! Exit, stage left!
 
guys, i never intended to insult anyone.
going back and reading my posts i can see how it came off that way.
anyways, you did answer my questions and sorta confirmed that what i want to do will work fine (just might not be ideal for other poeples setups)
 
No insult taken...
I just think it is absolutely ridiculous to come on here asking advice and then completely shoot it down... ESPECIALLY when the advice given had included important safety concerns.

If you want to heave a mash tun full of near 170*F wort/grains up on a table top... by all means do it.
If you want to play the Tippy-Dump game with a boil kettle... go on...

I hope to never see you on the board crying because you dropped a 150 pound mashtun on your foot and then scalded your brew buddy in the process.

[soap-box rant - done...]
 
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