How can I drain maximum of my wort out of my kettle?

So I have a 15 Gal. Kettle from ss brew tech and I only have the 3 piece ball valve. I will start brewing in that kettle and I will need a system to drain maximum of wort with minimum of kettle (hop & husks) material. Does anybody have advices how best to do it? Any pictures from your set up or link from homebrew shop would be helpful. And a few comments why it works well so I can make my judgement.

Thanks!

I use to pump out the wort with just a bazooka screen on the inside and it drained the kettle leaving about 1+ gallon of trub/hop matter behind. Now I whirlpool for about 1/2 hr creating a hop cone and then pump the wort out using a diptube so it gets down to about 1/4 gallon. You really only need a diptube if you want to get the maximum wort out.

I have a 1/2 coupling in my pot. My ball valve is connected to one side, and the other side I have a 90 degree street elbow that sits about 1/8" off the bottom of the pot. I can drain all but 2 cups of wort this way.

Dip tube. I also use a false bottom in the BK. I use whole leaf hops in the BK

joebob296 said:

I have a 1/2 coupling in my pot. My ball valve is connected to one side, and the other side I have a 90 degree street elbow that sits about 1/8" off the bottom of the pot. I can drain all but 2 cups of wort this way.

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Do you have a picture?

Could I use the elbow to attach to my ball valve and a hose barb attached to the elbow? Would it be better not to have a too wide hose barb in order to have less movement in bottom of the kettle? Or better buy wide and open the valve slowly? Thanks for help

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I use this as my pickup tube
https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/elbarb.htm

Depending on your fitting, you may also need a 1/2" nipple to connect the elbow to your kettle. Something like this
https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/hexnip.htm

Works pretty good. There's probably 1/8" or so between the tube opening and the bottom of the kettle.

If you use a lot of hops, you will need to do something like whirlpooling to prevent the pickup tube from getting clogged.

It doesn't suck up so strongly that the break material from whirlpool comes together with the flow?

I use to use a diptube made of a hook shaped copper tube connected to a short piece of silicone. The silicone connects to a barb/MPT on the inside. It worked well. You can also use a compression fitting like the one below with a bent copper tube. That way, you can adjust how far down you want to aspirate.
http://www.morebeer.com/products/stainless-38-comp-12-mpt.html?site_id=5

The trub cone formed from whirlpooling will lose its shape as wort draws down below the top of the cone. So at that point, you have to either accept some trub in your fermentor, find a way to block the trub, or leave the rest of the wort in the fermentor.

SS brew has a pickup tube with a "trub dam" to help with this issue. I've never used one but would be really interested to hear from anyone out there that has one, and ifcthey really do work!

Finlandbrews said:

Do you have a picture?

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Not at the moment but I will post one on Friday when I am home.

Finlandbrews said:

Could I use the elbow to attach to my ball valve and a hose barb attached to the elbow? Would it be better not to have a too wide hose barb in order to have less movement in bottom of the kettle? Or better buy wide and open the valve slowly? Thanks for help

Click to expand...

I have the fist picture; the elbow is on the coupling in my pot. It depends really on the height of where your ball valve is placed. If I noticed that I'm sucking up break material from the pot I just slow my pump down. If your just using gravity then I wouldn't worry about pulling up to much material.

Finlandbrews said:

Do you have a picture?

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Here are some pictures.View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1449328450.149967.jpg View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1449328479.112872.jpg

I bag my hops so I don't get much debris. Ten gallon kettle no dip tube. I drain all that will come out then tip the kettle to get the bottom 1 1/2 inches. I leave about a cup or so of the very thickest sludge in the kettle. What gets transferred all settles after fermentation. No messing around with dip tubes, hop dams, whirlpooling etc.