Keggle pickup missing a lot of wort in deadspace

Hi,

I recently built my AG setup. I'm mashing in a 10 gallon cooler, but my HLT and BK are both converted kegs. For my BK, I went with a weldless fitting and whirlpool side pickup from bargainfittings.com. After installation, I decided to do a dry run with just water to get a sense of my boil-up time, evap rate, deadspace, etc. I'm a data guy, so I can't jump into anything without testing it thoroughly....

At the end of my boil, I popped in my homemade IC and got the temp down to 75 in 6 minutes. Not bad at all. However, when I went to move the test wort from the BK to my carboy, I was left with a lot of remaining water at the bottom. Fastforward to last night. I decided to test with 2 gallons of water. I set my BK level, attached the high-temp tubing from the barb into the carboy, and let er' rip. Well, it died off after moving only about 1/2-3/4 (let's call it 5/8) of a gallon. It doesn't appear that I have any leaky connections. The waterline was still above the top of the pickup. The ONLY way I could get it to pump out the rest of the water was to tilt the BK very much to the side of the pickup opening. Basically, if there isn't a wall of water sitting on top of it, it doesn't seem to work. PICS of the inside...there is about a 1/4 inch gap between the bottom of the pickup and the bottom - of course, this is the bottom of the keg on the side, due to the domed-shape. Still, I should be pulling more out.

Any thoughts??? By the way, the pickup is attached with the metal ferrule, not the plastic.

you have a leak in the fitting between your kettle and your fitting. That is the only way that the siphon could stop prematurely.
Tighten it up and you should be good to go. (G2G)

But where would the leak be? If I tilt the keg so the full volume of water sits above the pickup hole, it siphons without issue.

Now that I can see the images, the leak is going to be at one or more of the threaded connections in your setup and it would be above the water line. There has to be an air leak somewhere there.

Thanks. I'm going to try retightening tonight. I could kick myself for using the compression fitting. If I have to rip off the dip tube, will I be SOL with the ferrule? I'm assuming that the nut that slides over the diptube and ferrule assembly and then threads into the piece inserted into the 90 is bonded to the tube right?

I agree that an air leak is likely the culprit, however are you certain that you had sufficient vertical distance between the BK spigot and carboy?

You might be able to test for an air leak by plugging the pickup tube and sucking/blowing into the barbed end.

Regarding the compression fitting, the ferrule might be pinched onto your diptube if you tightened it really well, but the compression nut should still be loose. If the compression nut can slip over the bend in the diptube then you should be fine for removing it. I use a similar compression pickup tube setup and I only hand tighten the compression nut snug.

I will say that when I was testing it, plugging up the diptube inlet stopped the siphon all together. That's why I was thinking no air leak. As for vertical distance, I had a much as I could get...I use a Camp Chef burner. I believe just from eyeballing it that the burner stand puts the bottom of the keg about 2.5 -3 feet off the ground. Add another 4-5 inches for the ball valve. The carboy is a 6 gallon one. The plastic tubing was slanted down at about a 30 degree angle from barb to top of carboy.

waldzinator said:

I will say that when I was testing it, plugging up the diptube inlet stopped the siphon all together.

Click to expand...

No offense, but plugging the inlet end of ANY siphon is going to stop the flow, so that might not have been the best testing method:cross:

Sounds like you have plenty of height difference to keep the siphon going, as a matter of fact it should be a strong siphon with that much difference.

Check your connections and let us know how you make out.

No offense, but plugging the inlet end of ANY siphon is going to stop the flow, so that might not have been the best testing method

Click to expand...

Haha, agreed. I was really checking to see if there was leak by plugging inlet, shutting valve, and looking to see if the backflow of air pushed bubbles out anywhere.

I will try blowing into the valve tonight and seeing if I can identify the leak location. I'll report back on my findings. Thanks.

I decided to pull the bulkhead and everything off and just start from scratch. I amazingly got the compression nut off with NO FIGHT! OOPS...:smack::smack::smack:.

I guess I was being a bit too gentle with the tightening...so much so that the ferrule never bonded. I guess this was a blessing in disguise. I rejiggered my dip tube to go a little more towards center, so I could get a bit more of the love juice out. I also swapped the metal ferrule out with the plastic one and tightened the crap out of it. That thing ain't leakin no way, no how.

It worked out that I have a dead space of about 1/2 gallon, provided I keep the height of the BK relative to the carboy sufficient.

Thanks for all the help. Na zdrowie!

I have the same setup as you, i took a hammer to the end of the tube and flattened it out a bit, that seemed to help me get a little more of that precious wort from the pot.