Nate's brew kettle with pick-up tube

I thought i'd share my revised brew kettle. This 5 gallon kettle is used for extract batches and sometimes as an HLT in all grain.

Last year I had cut the hole and installed a bulkhead from Northern Brewer. I was thinking about adding a dip tube / pickup tube to it. But looking at the whole set-up, it seemed that it would get pretty bulky on the inside. Originally there was close nipple through the kettle. A coupling holidng a washer and a silicon gasket to the inside of the pot and a lock-nut and gasket on the outside o the kettle with a valve.







After a year of leaving too much stuff in the kettle, or having to tip it or lean it i came up with a plan to have a dip tube, but not add a pile more fittings. I looked around and found some spare fittings from BargainFittings from an old project. Here is what I came up with:

New fitting set-up


Getting things put together


Inside complete


view from the outside


water test for leaks and ensure complete draining, about 1/8 inch left


Thoughts? Questions? Comments?

Nice work, it looks good.

Did you use a hole saw to cut the kettle

Uh, brilliant! That's perfect for a flat bottomed kettle, and using the stuff you had on hand makes it even better. That's gonna be super whirlpool friendly I believe.

was looking for just that. nice!!

I had exactly the same setup in my kettle until I upgraded to a keggle with soldered-in couplers. It worked great, and even did a pretty solid job of screening out the trub and hops after the boil. At one point in time, someone suggested putting a stainless scrubbie pad around the base to help with the filtering, but that never worked for me.

Nice fit.

I suppose since you're boiling it's not all that critical, but I'd flush the hell out of that fitting when you clean. Those internal threads can grow all kinds of nasties.

i used a couple of cobalt bits to get close and then i used a dremel with a grinding stone.

dmcoates said:

Nice work, it looks good.

Did you use a hole saw to cut the kettle

Click to expand...

How do you thread the 90 degree elbow on the inside? Are you able to remove it easily for cleaning? I would do the same if I could easily take it off.

I did something similar for my bottling bucket. A 90 degree PVC elbow, ground down a bit to lift it off the bottom of the bucket about 1/4 inch. It is stationary and the spigot valvle threads into it vs. the inverse.

My assembly was off the bottom enough where the elbow threaded on easily. I risnsed it well, took a bottling brush to it and rinsed it again. I am going to replace it with a street elbow and then grind the threads off with a dremel, that way i dont have to worry as much about build up. Im not really all that worried cause this should always be in contact with boiling fluid.

I like your Idea on the plastic bucket, do you have a picture o what you did? you have a threaded elbow that screws onto the threads of the spigot?

ultravista said:

How do you thread the 90 degree elbow on the inside? Are you able to remove it easily for cleaning? I would do the same if I could easily take it off.

I did something similar for my bottling bucket. A 90 degree PVC elbow, ground down a bit to lift it off the bottom of the bucket about 1/4 inch. It is stationary and the spigot valvle threads into it vs. the inverse.

Click to expand...

Yes, just a 1 inch 90 degree elbow, it replaces the nut for the spigot. I had to grind it down a bit to elevate it off the bottom. The concept is exactly the same as yours.

It works well.

Great idea with the elbow, I will have to investigate that for my brewpot!

I was going to do a 90 with a dip tube attached but now that I see this it makes a lot more sense. Since you left an 1/8" of liquid on the bottom, what was the distance between the bottom of the fitting and the kettle?

yep, just remember your outlet tube has to me lower than the bottom of the pot to "maintain vacuum"