Brew kettle valve location

I am in the process of getting the hardware together to convert a keg into a boil kettle. I'm trying to decide where to place the valve. I've read that I should try to get the valve as close to the bottom of the keg as possible and perhaps even use a dip tube. I use Whirlfloc tabs so my concern would be the hop and break material that I'd like to leave behind. When siphoning, that's possible by controlling the depth of the siphon but not with a fixed valve.
Should I place the valve as low as possible? If so, is there a way to filter all the unwanted material before the fermenter?

You put it as close as you can get to that bottom seam where the washers will still fit on the inside and then make a dip tube to get it the rest of the way to the bottom (less 1/8-1/4 inch). As for filtering, I scoop the hot break at boil, use paint strainer bags for hops, and don't worry about the cold break. The yeast seem to go to town on the cold break and it is minimal at the end of fermentation, and I have never had any issues with off flavors. With the time and effort it takes to brew, I don't want to leave any significant amount of beer behind in my boil kettle.

There are lots of options for filtering, search hop taco, hop spider, jaybirds hop stopper, etc. I prefer Jaybirds hopfilter, but I use only whole hops so it works really well to filter out that crap.

When I drilled my keggle I made sure the spigot was high enought on the fryer to drain into my buckets without having to worry about lifting the keggle full of unfermented wort.

I put mine about halfway from the bottom of the keg to the first bulge on the keg, so idk, 4-5 inches up from the bottom skirt? I built a copper dip tube and use a hop spider. I wouldn't do it any other way. With the dip tube, I leave only about 2 ounces of liquid in the keg after draining. I use pellet hops almost exclusively, and the hop spider still filters out, I'd say, 95% + of all the hop particles.... Just my 2 cents...

bellecitybrewer said:

I put mine about halfway from the bottom of the keg to the first bulge on the keg, so idk, 4-5 inches up from the bottom skirt? I built a copper dip tube and use a hop spider. I wouldn't do it any other way. With the dip tube, I leave only about 2 ounces of liquid in the keg after draining. I use pellet hops almost exclusively, and the hop spider still filters out, I'd say, 95% + of all the hop particles.... Just my 2 cents...

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Do you CFC/Plate Chill or do you have an IC?

I have a plate chiller from duda diesel. After i'm done brewing, I backflush the chiller for around 10-15 mins with near boiling water to try to get rid of any particles and then I flush it with starsan just to be safe....So far, the system has worked very well.

Thanks for the input.

Pickles...I'll research the filtering methods you suggested. Looks like this project now has another added dimension(don't they always?).

My keggle bulkhead is just above the first weld where the bottom skirt is affixed to the actual vessel. Any lower i think you'll have some problems. A dip tube is key.