hop stopper idea

Good evening all, with all the talk of hop stoppers-stainless screens and such.Could one fabricate on out of good clean copper window screen material ? I'm at a loss for stainless screen,tubing and fittings but have endless access to copper-Which by the way-Is copper ok to have in the brew keggle (I mean for the entire boil ?)I only need a 6-8 inch run from thru-wall to center of keg-a copper hopstopper would be real easy for me.Lookin' to brew on Thursday.... Thoughts anyone ?? Thanks in advance.Shane

Shane, run as much copper as you like. Most manifolds in mash tuns are made out of copper. It won't hurt your beer at all.:rockin:

when i use whole hops i use a copper scrubbie on the end of my pickup tube its in there for the entire boil.i just wire tie it to the tube.

SAS98M said:

endless access to copper

Click to expand...

Copper is almost like gold anymore...head to the recycle yard...you are rich.

I'm currently trying to design/build my own hop stopper out of 60/40 mesh stainless screen material from Mcmaster. The key to the original hopstopper design is the large surface area. It looks like it's about 10" in diameter and both sides are mesh. If I have the area of a circle formula correct, that's 150ish square inches total. To build that design you have to take some of the strands out of the edges of the mesh to use as thread to sew the two discs together. I'm thinking of trying something that requires much less stitching by creating a 1 or 2 inch diameter tube of mesh that runs from the keggle coupling to the other side of the keg. I do acknowledge though that even a 2" x 12" tube is only about 75 square inches of surface area. This would be like a bazooka tube with a dip tube running through it.

I have heard of guys using those stainless colanders you can buy in the kitchen section. Just cut the mesh out and fold it over like a taco, sew it together and bam...the hop taco. Google hop taco and you will find a step by step picture tutorial,or go here.http://kotmf.com/photos/v/MiscBrewingProjects/HopTaco/

I'm sure that will work for whole hops, but pellet sludge would go right through that size mesh. I think the spacing on those is like 1/16th of an inch (that would be 16x16 mesh). The 60x40 mesh I just got looks a lot like the filter you find in the straining funnels. I know that stops pellet hop sludge (because it clogs up in seconds).

One source of fine SS mesh is splatter screens made for cooking. I've got a couple that are 12" in diameter and have a wire rim plus a handle. I'm planning on removing the handles and running a 1/4" copper tubing down the middle or maybe a loop. The heavy wire rim will make it easy to hog nose the two screens together.

SAS98M said:

Good evening all, with all the talk of hop stoppers-stainless screens and such.Could one fabricate on out of good clean copper window screen material ? I'm at a loss for stainless screen,tubing and fittings but have endless access to copper-Which by the way-Is copper ok to have in the brew keggle (I mean for the entire boil ?)I only need a 6-8 inch run from thru-wall to center of keg-a copper hopstopper would be real easy for me.Lookin' to brew on Thursday.... Thoughts anyone ?? Thanks in advance.Shane

Click to expand...

it would work. i have built two of them...pm me if you want some help.

Thought I would start this up again.....I just built a hop stopper, Hop taco what ever you want to call it.....Anyway, my hop stopper is pretty big and it rest on the bottom of my kettle. Its the diameter of the 16 gallon keg Long and have the diameter wide.....Doest that make sence? its about 12 inches long and 6inches wide. Its probably a little bigger than it needs to be, anyway do you think there is a chance hops might get underneath the screen and burn? I wanted my tubing inside the screen to be as close to the bottom as possible to get all the wort out?