Location of sight glass

[nealm]

As the title suggests I am contemplating putting a sight glass in my system to manage the water volumes. My system is an electric version of Lonnie McAllisters CRDFM and inspired by Jeff Karpinski's two vessel electric system.
So, my question is where to put the sight glass; the kettle or the mash tun.
I leave you to expound on the relative merits of each sight.

NealM

 

[m1k3]

My sight glass is on the HLT.

Having a slight glass on a kettle or mash tun sounds like a mess to me.

 

[Chanoc]

From your Tel options..
I'd say Mash tum...
That way you don't need to worry too much about sanitation...
But then. it won't be too useful for sparging purposes...

 

[jmcquesten]

Not the mash tun. It won't be accurate once there's grain added.

 

[Rockn_M]

I have one on my Mash and Boil tanks. Fr the Mash tank I add the water first then add the grains then stir. Depending on which one you get they are pretty easy to take a part and clean.

 

[eric19312]

Sight glass on the brew kettle...

You want to know when you have collected enough runnings (pre boil volume)
You want to monitor rate of boil off (so you don't over or under boil)
You want boil to end at expected post boil volume.
All of these are aided by sight glass on the boil kettle.

As for mash volume I think you could control that with a float type valve such as the blichmann auto sparge. Say your recipe uses 17 gallons to end up with 12 gallons in the brew kettle end of boil. Start with 10 gal in the kettle. Pump that to the mash tun. Set the mash tun float valve at the 10 gal level. Then add 7 more gal to the brew kettle. Now circulate till you reach strike temperature. Stop the pump and close valve from mash to kettle. Dough in. Reset the float to the new level. Restart the pump with temp control set at mash temp. Volume in the brew kettle should be stable. At end of mash cycle you still have 7 gal in the kettle. Stop recirculating back to the mash tun and pull 6.5 more gallons into the brew kettle. (13.5 gallons).

 

[crane]

Sight glass on the brew kettle...

You want to know when you have collected enough runnings (pre boil volume)
You want to monitor rate of boil off (so you don't over or under boil)
You want boil to end at expected post boil volume.
All of these are aided by sight glass on the boil kettle.

As for mash volume I think you could control that with a float type valve such as the blichmann auto sparge. Say your recipe uses 17 gallons to end up with 12 gallons in the brew kettle end of boil. Start with 10 gal in the kettle. Pump that to the mash tun. Set the mash tun float valve at the 10 gal level. Then add 7 more gal to the brew kettle. Now circulate till you reach strike temperature. Stop the pump and close valve from mash to kettle. Dough in. Reset the float to the new level. Restart the pump with temp control set at mash temp. Volume in the brew kettle should be stable. At end of mash cycle you still have 7 gal in the kettle. Stop recirculating back to the mash tun and pull 6.5 more gallons into the brew kettle. (13.5 gallons).

What this guy said. I have one on my HLT and one on the boil kettle. One on the mash tun would be useless once you add grain. As for sanitation and cleaning this is trivial. It will get sanitized by the wort. Sure the wort is not boiling inside of the sight glass, but it is still damn hot enough to kill anything living in there. As for cleaning I take my garden hose sprayer and set it to the jet setting and blast water down the top into the kettle for a few seconds. Any hot break that made its way in there is gone instantly.