Keg to ekeggle conversion pics

FWIW, hose barbs make up most of my interconnections as well, both temporary and semi-permanent ones.

Not sure of Kevin's reasons, but they have been cheap, durable and reliable in my system

 

The hard work isn't lost when you screw a hose barb in! I can always change the fittings, but so far I haven't seen the need. There's just not enough pressure in a home brew system to blow a silicone hose off of a barb. I have never had that happen, anyway. Plus, barbs are quick connects!

KPSquared and processhead- Thanks for the compliments!

 

That is the best DIY hop blocker I have seen yet. I'm going to give this a try for sure. The wire rim for support was the kicker. I don't have a welder but the silver solder approach sounds like a reasonable alternative. Very nice builds, and thanks for the ideas/instructions on the blocker

 

Question for the OP:
Have you tried your hop spider design yet? Reason I ask is because I had one made for me very very similar to yours, where the od of the spider was just a couple inches less than the id of kettle. I had huge problems once things started boiling. First the stopper would bounce up and down from the bubbles, and each time a burst of bubbles and wort would shoot up the sides. THen I clamped it down to the kettle but I had huge boil-over problems coming up the sides when ever a burst of bubbles were released from under the stopper. For the next attempt I re-did the bottom of the stopper by making it tapered which did allow the bubbles to move up the sides smoothly, but after a while the bubbles would rise up the sides again until they were overflowing. I have now scrapped it altogether. Hopefully yours will work better than mine did!!!

 

Thanks. The wire was key. Silver solder should work great! You will probably want to overlap the ends a half inch or so.

 

I had all of those problems! My pre boil volume was huge to begin with (14.5 gallons in a keggle!), so the hop spider made the first 15 minutes of the boil a nightmare. I think with half the boil volume it would have worked great, though. What was your boil volume? Luckily my new BK is huge at 25 gallons. I shouldn't have any problems with boil overs in it. I plan to clamp the spider to the side of the BK to keep it from bouncing around.

I did a water test with a few ounces of whole hops in the new BK with the hop spider and it seemed to work perfectly. I put the hops in the kettle, not the spider, so I could see circulation. About 75% of the boil went directly up into the basket (which will promote utilization in the basket) and the remaining 25% went into the liquid around the basket which kept everything circulating very nicely. My thought is to put pellets in the spider and whole hops in the kettle since the bazooka tube seems to handle them fine. Hopefully the spider doesn't let any pellet debris out and clog the bazooka...

 

Will do! I'll post back on the results once I get it built. Putting an order in to McMaster on Monday.

 

Cool. Sounds like it should work out for you. My BK is only 10 gal and my pre-boil volumes are usually around 8 gal so I don't have a lot of room to spare. Also I think part of the problem for me was due to my mesh being too fine/tight. Anyway I decided to go with a hop blocker around the dip tube method. I've built it but haven't tried it yet. Fingers will be crossed

 

Where did you get your sight glass material?

 

I think he said McMaster Carr

 

The 3/8"x1/8" on my keg came from McMaster and the 1/2"x3/8" on my BK came from Bargain Fittings. I highly recommend the 1/2"x3/8". It works so much better than the 3/8"x1/8". I will never use that size again. The smaller tube is very tweak and bubbles get stuck in it more often. I always thought the ID of the smaller tube made it work poorly, and now that I have another sight glass with a larger ID, I'm sure of it. I think the issues with the small tube are due to capillary action.

 

Very Cool Build!

 

personally, if I did it over, I would use 3/4" tri-clover on every single tube in a 5-15 gallon system... I used a lot of 1" tri-clover with 5/8" ID tube , because that was what was cheap for me years ago... now that I can get 3/4" stuff in three different pipe sizes from places like stilldragon.com

side note, if you cannot weld stainless, take a TIG class at the local community college, and buy a small DC only TIG welder (such as an invertig 131 for $900 ) and hit your buddies up for a few $$$ when you weld things for them, every homebrew community needs a few weldors...

 

Nice build and camera work really classing up the home brew community.

 

Thanks for the comments, everyone.

I just realized that there are no pictures of the complete system, so I'll try to get something up soon.

As for the barb fittings, they are perfect for me. I seem to change things so frequently and they're probably the cheapest, easiest type of connection to use while dialing a system in. Case in point: I was not happy with the flow through the copper manifold in my Coleman mash tun, so I decided to build a new, SS mash tun with a false bottom to increase the opened area. I just bought the vessel and am about to buy the false bottom, but I don't have to buy any fittings! The only place I would definitely use tri-clamps is on a fermentation vessel, but I would not use any tri-clamp fittings with threads on them. That kind of defeats the purpose.

 

The new MT is done! It's a 20 gallon Concord pot with a Jaybird false bottom. I ordered the false bottom about 1/32" - 1/16" big so I could grind it to a perfect fit as these pots are sometimes not perfectly round. The PID temperature probe will go in the T at the top of the MT. Going to brew this coming weekend...

 

That false bottom is gorgeous.

 

Super clean as always. What's the 1/4" valve on the ouput for? Sample port?

 

I love the simplicity, like how the vertical pieces act as a stand and as a second barrier to grain that might have made its way past the main, horizontal part of the FB. That feature is especially beneficial if the FB doesn't fit the MT tightly. Even the outlet is protected by the second barrier with those little "legs" of the stand. I will be subjecting it to a 31.5 lb. grain bill this weekend.

 

No, you will not be able to get a sample out of that unless the pump is not running. If it's running, it will actually suck air. That valve lets me insert a thermometer into the recirculating wort stream while it's recircing, without any disruption, to check the temp (not that I need to as the PID should be handling that task. It's just to double check that the mash is going as planned). It's a 1/4" ball valve with 1/2" male NPT thread welded to one end (so I can screw it into any fitting on my system) and a 1/4" compression fitting welded to the other end. I use silicone 0-rings in the compression fitting for easy thermometer insertion and removal. What's cool about it is that I don't need to dedicate a thermometer to the MT outlet because I can remove it whenever I want. It lets me take temperature measurements of the MT outlet and any other stuff during the brew day with my best thermometer.

What's going on with your system? I can't wait to see some progress pics. Your stuff is super clean!

 

It's been a long time since I updated this thread! I've added a BrewPi controlled Beverage Air MT12 "cooler" (it will refrigerate or freeze) and a Stout 15.5 gallon conical fermenter. I wired SSRs into the Bev Air which switch the compressor/condenser fan and a 200W Lasko MyHeat heater. The evaporator fan that came in it was 120v and 102 watts, so it has to go as it added a lot of heat. It will be replaced with a 140mm, 12v DC computer fan that moves about 120cfm. The BrewPi is awesome and held water to within 0.1 degrees F during testing.

 

I replaced the 120V evap fan with a 118 cfm, 140mm computer fan which I'm powering off a wall wart. The thing is almost completely silent and works perfectly during cooling, heating, and idling (it runs 24/7). I had to make an adapter plate, though, as the new fan is about 1" smaller than the old fan. The plate is made from 3/16" polyethylene sheet.

I also plumbed CO2 to the chamber so I can supply CO2 to the headspace during trub dumping, cold crashing, and kegging to eliminate oxygen exposure. It also allows me to purge the headspace after opening the lid for dry hop additions. The system uses a low pressure propane regulator that supplies a steady 0.4 psi. When the volume in the fermenter changes, a little gas flows to make up for the loss in volume. I'm more than half way through my first cold crash in this chamber and with the CO2 system and everything seems to be working perfectly. I may replace the condenser fan with a few of these computer fans as the chamber is ultimately going to live in the house. The stock condenser fan is just a little too loud. These things were designed to keep a completely full fridge of beverages cold during constant opening and closing of the door all day, day in, day out. The stock parts are extremely beefy and overkill for a fermentation chamber that never gets opened. The most stress that it sees is during cold crashing, but it gets the air temperature down to the mid 20s without breaking a sweat, even with the new fan which is like a gentle breeze compared to the factory fan which was like a tornado.

 

Nice job, that's a great freezer for that conical!

John