Boiling in the sight glass

[TexasGuy]

I picked up a used 15 gallon keggle with threaded valve, thermometer and sight glass...

Can the sight glass be useful during the boil? Mine is bubbling before the keg comes to a boil, and when I actually put extract in the keg, I'm concerned about it boiling over and making a mess. It expelled some water tonight during my boil and leak test.

If not, I figure putting 12 inches of silicone tubing on the top of it to spill back into the keggle is probably the only solution?

Thanks for the advice.

 

[day_trippr]

Invisible sight gauge?

I love my Floor Burners, but they do spill heat around the kettle bottoms, so if you want to keep your sight tube from boiling (and the vinyl handle cover on your ball valve from melting) you need to add a strategically-placed heat deflector or two under same.

My kettles came with SS sheet metal pieces (10x6" maybe) which can just reach from one leg to another and can protect both the ball valve/temperature gauge (which are vertically stacked) and the offset sight glass. The one time I forgot to put them in place the tip-off was the sight gauge starting to boil.

Here's a pic from long ago of my old 10g kettle on a Floor Burner and the SS section in place to give some idea what I'm writing about...

Cheers!

 

[Wayne1]

Brewhardware.com offers many different heat shields

https://www.brewhardware.com/category_s/1848.htm

 

[wilserbrewer]

Wrapping some aluminum foil about the lower end of the site tube should deter enough heat to prevent boiling in the fitting.

 

[TexasGuy]

I cut down a piece of sheet metal...it got the job done...although I'll likely get heat shields.

If I was to drill my own holes on another, is there any reason not to group the components closer together? The probe, valve and sight glass are at 4:00, 6:00 and 8:00.