Bazooka Screen Placement idea?

[ANewrBrewr]

So I bought a nice new 15 gallon kettle and proceeded to drill away at it for my ball valve and bazooka screen. Well I didn't account for the hop trub that would settle at the bottom of the kettle and consequently I drilled my hole to close to the bottom and I'm getting stuck flow. My first thought was to add some elbows to lift the screen off the bottom a bit, but don't like the idea of adding extra threaded pieces in my kettle (for cleaning purposes) plus stainless steel parts aren't cheap or easy to find.

So my idea...

Can you just run a 90 degree elbow facing up on the inside of the kettle connected to the ball valve and then screw on the bazooka screen so it is going vertical up the side wall of the kettle? This seems it would solve issues of having to stir around my screen during a brew and it seems it would prevent any sediment that would clog the screen like it does when placed on the bottom. Has anyone done this? Or is there something I'm missing that would cause this idea to not work?

Cheers!

 

[ong]

I wouldn't think that would be a great idea. Say your bazooka tube is 10" long by 1" diameter; this would effectively turn it into a 1" long tube as the kettle was draining towards the bottom, giving you much less surface area for the hops to cluster around. I always had problems with the screen getting blocked when I tried it the normal way, and I can imagine this being significantly worse.

 

[Yesfan]

I used to use a bazooka tube too. Freaking hate those things, at least for filtering out trub. I use a hop spider and have not looked back. For draining the wort, nothing seems to be better than a simple street elbow attached to the bulkhead. That almost completely drains it dry.

 

[ANewrBrewr]

I wouldn't think that would be a great idea. Say your bazooka tube is 10" long by 1" diameter; this would effectively turn it into a 1" long tube as the kettle was draining towards the bottom, giving you much less surface area for the hops to cluster around. I always had problems with the screen getting blocked when I tried it the normal way, and I can imagine this being significantly worse.

I see what you're saying and I thought the same. However with the traditional layout yes you are getting more surface contact (towards the end, at the beginning it would be the same) however all of the trub and sediment is at the bottom so even though you have more surface area to work with you will have more of that surface area covered in hop/trub debris, slowing flow. However if the screen is above this layer of trub you should get more flow even though you have less surface are as it drains...just my thoughts. I'm going to give it a try on my next brew and I'll report the results. Cheers!

 

[ong]

Hope it works out well! Can't hurt to try. Worst case you'll end up pouring wort through a sieve grumbling under your breath, and I imagine we've all ended up there a few times.