keggle mash tun

I am sure this has been beat on like a dead horse, but hey Im new here. LOL
I am going to start slowly building a nice 10 gal brewery and decided to start with the mash tun. I picked up a couple of 15 gal kegs for 50 bucks each and I have already cut the top out of one of them with my plasma cutter.

From all the posts that I am reading I will probably build a rims. So should I run the drain out of the bottom? It would seem that I would get all the wort out that way. I picked up some weld bungs on ebay but I still need to figure out what kind of valves. Lots of options.

honestly, i prefer a dip tube poking down through a false bottom. it will make it more convenient for a ball valve also. i recommend this for weldless. I don't have this exact setup but i'm sure its great:

http://www.norcalbrewingsolutions.com/store/False_Bottoms_Keg_Keggle.html

I'll dissent and say bottom drains are awesome on a non-fired keg. Why have a diptube in the way when you don't have to? Why chance losing the siphon (it happens)?

If I go with a bottom drain would 1/2 inch be the right size? I dont have a problem welding so I will weld a bung in. As far as the heat the electric hwh element looks like the way to go.

Frige said:

If I go with a bottom drain would 1/2 inch be the right size? I dont have a problem welding so I will weld a bung in. As far as the heat the electric hwh element looks like the way to go.

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hey, I'm new here too and I have the exact same situation. Did you put the drain on the bottom of the keggle? If so, what did you think?

Bobby_M said:

I'll dissent and say bottom drains are awesome on a non-fired keg. Why have a diptube in the way when you don't have to? Why chance losing the siphon (it happens)?

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I sucked through an aluminum foil wrapped tube last sunday. sucked the big one. :cross:

Both setups work well. Since you're here in the Houston area, PM me. There are several of us using electric HERMS systems here that would be more than willing to show you their rigs.

chadillac7819 said:

hey, I'm new here too and I have the exact same situation. Did you put the drain on the bottom of the keggle? If so, what did you think?

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Yep, I put the drain on the bottom for both the HLT and the Mash tun. I just got finished building the HLT and ran some water through it. It works great! Now I have to finish up the Mash tun and the BK. I will post some pictures later.

I bottom drain all my keggles. LOVE it! The only one that I have to watch is the BK. I have to keep the drain valve closed during the boil to keep the hops in the kettle. However, once the boil is done, I circulate the boil through my HERMS coil to sanitize it and then back into a hop spider to screen out the hop matter. Works like a champ.
Bottom drains are SO very nice to clean also. Especially the MLT. And as BobbyM said, there is no dip tube to get in the way!

why does your boiled wort go through the inside of the herms coil? i'm confused on that part. what exactly is your cooling process? are you going BK -> HERMS coil in ice water -> BK? you recirc through the hop spider, does that catch cold break as you cool?

Ahh. Sorry, I could have clarified that a bit.
I used to batch chill through a full HLT of tap temp water, then dump once normalized and refill with ice water. I would just run this 'till my low temp alarm sounded in the boil kettle.
The hop spider actually gets full and packed with hop matter pretty quickly. Once full, I pull it up and let it drain the wort back into the BK trying to keep the draining at or just below the surface of the wort.

NOW, I still use the hop spider to filter the hops like before, but I chill in a single pass and output with this device I put together with some parts from BobbyM

I sanitize the HERMS coil prior to adding water to the HLT so the HERMS coil is just in open air. Sure there is a little cooling happening probably, but not near like it would cool in water.
I control my chilled temp with the output valve on my pump. The slower it pumps, the colder the wort gets, naturally. While chilling, I also recirculate my HLT full of ice water to keep the HERMS coil surrounded by fresh ice water. I noticed though, that if I gave the ice water a hard stir, it would immediately drop the wort temp down into the low 50's and high 40's. I could theoretically chill to lager pitching temps with this method, though I've not done that yet.

My HLT and MLT are bottom draining, but my BK is not. When I have the time, money, and inclination, I'm going to see if I can get my BK bottom draining as well. It rocks.

A false bottom is imperative, of course, but that's true with any MLT. Or at least, some sort of lautering mechanism whether a braid or manifold or false bottom. I have been thrilled with my bottom draining kegs. I used to have a traditional diptube set up, but not anymore!

My MLT is a keg, turned upside down (so the bottom is actually the top). The old sanke opening is my opening for my bottom-draining MLT. They sell tri-clover fittings just for this purpose.

Bottom draining makes a lot of sense to me for a MLT, but for a bottom-drained boil keggle what becomes of the wort/hops/trub that accumulates in the drain plumbing during the brewing process (whether BIAB or multi-vessel all grain)? Do you just run it off and discard it? I do understand what Huaco suggests about recirculating a bit after the boil, but I'm trying to stay away from pumping/recirculating for now. I'm okay with running it off and even dumping it back into the kettle through the hop bag, unless there's a reason not to do that.

I'm about start modifying a keg into an e-BIAB keggle. The bottom drain approach is appealing for the obvious reasons. But it seems that whatever is in the drain plumbing will be "different" than what's in the main part of the kettle throughout the process. For BIAB, it will start out being just water, but by "flameout" I would expect it to contain a lower concentration of fermentable sugar and whatever break material and hop particles settle through the drain opening during the boil.

In fact, it seems like without recirculating, the plumbing and its contents may never be fully sterilized (even though I'm very careful about cleaning and sanitizing everything before and after brewing). I'm not too worried about that as I intend to do no-chill and drain the hot wort directly into one or more corny-kegs for fermentation.

Does anyone else do something like this?

I put my drain next to my sight glass on my BK. I always seem to have a lot of hop trash after my boil and I would not want to suck all that into my fermentor. Of course I am using propane to heat my bk so I could not have a bottom drain anyway.

I am also looking into a mash tun keggle. The bottom drain sounds intriguing, but I'm having trouble seeing it. Any way we could see some pics of the bottom drain? Perhaps inside and out? The picture posted earlier appeared to be a mash tun keggle built upside down. I assume because the whole is already in the top of a sanke. So, what kind of fittings do you use for the hole? Weldless, etc?

Sure...
Here is a picture of what the under side of my HLT looks like. The MLT is the same - this is just the only picture I could link to quickly.



This is before I finished my brewery, but this is what it looks like with the valve passing through. In the top picture you see that I have temp sensor inline sampling the temp of the fluid in circulation. This and the valve make it tough to pass the bottom drain assembly through the hole. Thus, it needs to be threaded up through the hole and attached with the TriClamp. It is a little tricky but not hard.


My solution was to cut a hole in the top of my brew stand and protect the edge with a sink disposall flange (non threaded style)




Here it is as it would be while brewing. The rivets/hinges on the TriClamp touch the flange a little bit. Not enough to care about though.



Best part is, you have a nice SS domed disk left after cutting... you can drive yourself NUTS on the drill press and angle grinder making a VERY good false bottom! This thing really gets some flow through it!


I would suggest purchasing from BobbyM... He is QUICK to ship and pretty straight-forward on his prices. This is his bottom draining attachment.

Amazing! Thanks for the pics.

I was so excited about putting in my bottom drain on my new keggles that I went ahead and drilled the pilot hole BEFORE I had a chance to fire them on my burner with some PBW to clean 'em up inside.

I now have a nice little 3/16" hole in the bottom that I want to temporary plug so I can boil them...any suggestions? welding of any kind is out, so would some sort of temp resistant screw or bolt do the trick?

You are not trying to bottom drain on a gas fired keggle are you? Can't be done... ok, maybe it "CAN" be done, I have just never seen it done.

I was hesitant to start a new thread, but if I just wanted to do a drain/siphon without a false bottom (yet), would this stuff work?

http://www.homebrewing.org/Stainless-Steel-Dip-Tube-for-Kettle_p_1375.html
http://www.homebrewing.org/12-Inch-Brass-Ball-Valve_p_1054.html


This is the false bottom I want to use (or something similar):
http://www.homebrewing.org/Stainless-Steel-PICO-style-keg-kettle-false-bottom-wsupports_p_1010.html

This is awesome. If I ever change over to electric I will do bottom drains. Very cool.

Huaco said:

You are not trying to bottom drain on a gas fired keggle are you? Can't be done... ok, maybe it "CAN" be done, I have just never seen it done.

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No. I just got these kegs off Craigs List and they are filthy inside (some from the plasma cutter silt and some general crud). I wanted to boil them first with PBW to clean them up before I put the bottom drain spout assembly on. Just need a temp patch for the 3/16" pilot hole for a 15 minute boil.

I will be using an electric RIMS and Brewtroller OR BCS for my HLT and MLT which will both be bottom draining.

i would just finish the bottom drain assembly. you're going to end up with more metal shavings and cutting oil in there anyway. once the bottom drain is in, heat the water in another vessel or just use tap temp water. you'd be surprised at what a OxyClean or PBW soak will do at just about any temp

You could just put a plug in for temp use. If you are going with 1/2 pipe thread.