1. Boilovers are impossible while doing a five gallon batch in a 15.5 gal. keggle.
I took my eye off the damned thing for 10 seconds, and next thing I know Mt. Vesuvius is ready to blow. I stirred like mad, but a bit of wort dripped down the side of the keg. Six extract brews doing three gallon boils in a four gallon pot, and I manage to avoid boilovers every time. When working with seven gallons of space to spare, I blow it. Go figure.
2. Bazooka screens suck with hop pellets, but they should be useful for filtering out cold break.
Nope. I used a muslin bag to put all my hops in today. And, I couldn't believe how much sludge I kept behind after the boil. The junk was close to the size of f baseball that I fished out of the keg. I was very confident that the Bazooka T-Screen wouldn't get clogged this time, with all the hops gone. And, it didnt. The cold break merrily and effortlessly made it's way past my screens. That thing is becoming more of a waste of money each time I use it. I really have to look into building a hopstopper like device, and throw the paint filter around the immersion chiller, like a lot of people here do.
Other than that, things went very well. Oh, except for the part when water shot from the vinyl hose that supplies cold water to the immersion chiller. That downright sucked, in fact. All I saw was bacteria doing swan dives into my wort. On the plus side, it was very little that got through, it happened when the wort was at very high temps (probably 190-200 F), and it was easy to correct. The vinyl hose that returns the water out of the chiller had a kink in it, and it backed up the flow. No big deal...I hope.
I took my eye off the damned thing for 10 seconds, and next thing I know Mt. Vesuvius is ready to blow. I stirred like mad, but a bit of wort dripped down the side of the keg. Six extract brews doing three gallon boils in a four gallon pot, and I manage to avoid boilovers every time. When working with seven gallons of space to spare, I blow it. Go figure.
2. Bazooka screens suck with hop pellets, but they should be useful for filtering out cold break.
Nope. I used a muslin bag to put all my hops in today. And, I couldn't believe how much sludge I kept behind after the boil. The junk was close to the size of f baseball that I fished out of the keg. I was very confident that the Bazooka T-Screen wouldn't get clogged this time, with all the hops gone. And, it didnt. The cold break merrily and effortlessly made it's way past my screens. That thing is becoming more of a waste of money each time I use it. I really have to look into building a hopstopper like device, and throw the paint filter around the immersion chiller, like a lot of people here do.
Other than that, things went very well. Oh, except for the part when water shot from the vinyl hose that supplies cold water to the immersion chiller. That downright sucked, in fact. All I saw was bacteria doing swan dives into my wort. On the plus side, it was very little that got through, it happened when the wort was at very high temps (probably 190-200 F), and it was easy to correct. The vinyl hose that returns the water out of the chiller had a kink in it, and it backed up the flow. No big deal...I hope.
