Site gauge -- not glass?

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chicagojimmyjames

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I'm not crazy about the idea of having a site gauge made out of glass. My equipment gets bumped around way too much when I'm cleaning.

Do people always disconnect these before moving/cleaning the keggles?

What about high-temp food-grade clear plastic? Vinyl?? (If it's somehow attached above to stay straight?)
 
Ha.

I would RATHER have a glass guage. the plastics develope stress cracks from thermal shock and they eventually stain too.
 
How about some kind of calibrated dip stick? Plunk it in the pot, see how high the wort is, rinse and repeat (literally). A sight glass has bling factor but I don't really understand the need to measure boil-off in real time.
 
I want it for measuring sparge water... A dip stick would be fine. Good idea! Why does it have to be outside your kettle? One of those would be easy to move from kettle to kettle; it could serve the place of 3 sight gauges, right?

A piece of stainless steel, weighted at the bottom and calibrated at 1/2 gallon intervals... There's a certain amount of bling in that fabrication, too.

:mug:
 
Not sure snout rest of you guys, but trying to read liquid in a boiling pot with steam is not something I'd want to do.

I'll take a sight glass any day of the week over a measuring stick.

-= Jason=-

Sent from my HTC Incredible using Home Brew Talk
 
This is what I wrote in my website FAQ because I often get interesting emails from people telling me I'm ripping people off because XYZ solution is so much cheaper and works just as well..

2. Can't I just _______ instead of installing a sight glass?

A: There are all kinds of alternatives to installing a sight glass. You can brew without them. When I first started all grain brewing, I simply measured all my liquid volumes in a spare bucket that had gallon markings printed on the side. That was fine for smaller batches at a time when I transfered everything with a bucket. After you start pumping from one vessel to the next, the use of a bucket is a waste of time.

A lot of brewers also create calibrated dip sticks (or story sticks) that you drop into the vessel to read the level. In the case of a boil kettle, you'll need the level to last for a minute so that you can remove it to read because a constant stream of steam makes it hard to see into the boil kettle. Also, if you use a tiered system where the hot liquor tank is up high, it's a pain to climb up a step stool to watch the level as you drain it. The basic story here is that a sight glass is a matter of convenience, not necessity. However, Now that I'm used to it, I don't think I could brew on my system without one.
Click to expand...

I actually do have borosilicate "real glass" sight glasses on my HLT and Boil Kettle but I have it protected in a full shroud. It's not something I can manufacture on a large scale so I sell kits that won't break when it gets bumped.
 

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