Kettle Pickup Tubes

Looking for some ideas to design a pickup tube for my HLT and BK, anyone have any pointers of bending 1/2" OD Soft Copper tubing in small lengths? I am currently running a 1/2" x 1/2" brass straight compression fitting to about a 6" length of soft copper tube into flat bottom kettles, I am either going to have to cut a slant into the end of the copper or bend it downward at a sharp 90" angle. I am not sure a 90" compression fitting will fit due to the clearance of the 1/2" nipple to the bottom of the kettle.

Thanks,

-huK

I've had some luck filling soft tubing with sand or salt, solidly taping the ends up and shaping it with a rubber mallet. The sand helps keep it from collapsing or flattening. It's still tricky to get exactly the shape you want.

That's a great idea, I will probably try that out. I am going to look at my options and pick up a 1/2" x 1/2" 90 compression fitting to today and see if it will fit close enough to the bottom.

Just get a copper elbow stub out

http://www.ltconnections.com/LTCopper/Images/PEX/stub%20out%20ell%20pex.jpg

You can get them in many sizes and with or without fittings. I've done 2 kettle dip tubes with these and sweated them on... works perfectly!

I don't have a torch to sweat the fitting with, trying to do it cheaply haha.

I actually prefer 1/2 rigid tubing (5/8" actual OD) with a 90' elbow to make the turn. My HLT had a 1/2" soft tube and something about the restriction there caused it to suck air down a vortex when there was still 3 gallons in the keg. I switched to the 1/2" ID setup, which matches my outflow tubing size, and it doesn't do that anymore.

Hmmm, I am going to give this stuff a try, the internal dimensions are consistent through the entire system so I may not get the aeration you were speaking about. How much clearance do you guys think I should provide the tube from the bottom of the kettle to avoid flow restriction? I guess I can just tweak it to see if it causes flow issues.

Mine sits pretty flush to the bottom, maybe 1/4" gap.

Interesting point, Bobby. I get the vortex and air with my soft copper, and I figured it was just par for the course. I would lose prime when filling the fermentor (gravity). It's worth a few bucks to redesign my pickup tube....

Bobby - just one 90 straight down like "7" or two 90's so you can angle back to the corner of the pot more like a "J" . Just realized this makes sense to me but probably not anyone else on the planet. The seven would come out from the bulkhead and straight down, which is how I read Bobby M has his. Using 2 90's you can go left(and down) twice coming from the fitting and basically siphon from the corner of the pot.

-OCD

Heres my MT setup


And this is my BK

Great advice here so far and good ideas, thanks guys. Here is what I have done so far for the chilling side of things. I built the pre chiller out of about 20ft of left over copper from the CFC, it turned out really nice and I think it will do a great job of killing this Florida heat. I am going to drill some holes in the plywood and strap the CFC down to it with some large zip ties and plumb it up. Going to be putting a QD nipple on the BK as well. I was thinking about finding something like a 14"Lx16"Wx8"D tupperware and drilling some holes in it and cutting out some places for the QD's and securing it over the pump to protect it from any splashing that may occur, any ideas against this thought?

i can't remember the terms for the pieces i used, but i spent lots of time in the fittings section of home depot while working my ideas out.

What i ended up with was pretty simple. At first i tried to avoid sweating the fittings, but in the end decided i'd give it a shot when i found out my neighbor had a torch i could use. It really wasn't that hard, at all.

i took a fitting with a threaded end that screwed into the weldless bulkhead on the inside of my bk, and sweated that right onto a 90 degree elbow. I then used a small section of pipe that is used to join two longer pieces and sweated that into the other end of the elbow. Once installed it fit well, but i ended up cutting about half of the third piece off to avoid flow restrictions.

all in all very simple. I can get all but about 3 cups using the tube. I'll get a picture next time i take down the kettle.