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Checkout our new stainless steel basket from Arbor Fabricating. Chad was great to work with. The feet have 3" of clearance, well above the element and the pickup tube. I sent Chad a piece of voile fabric that my bag is made of and he measured it as 200 microns x 600 microns, so we decided to go...

Bad Kitty Brewery won best in style (15A) for our Hefeweizen at the first ever homebrew competition at O'Connor's Home Brew Supply. http://www.oconnorshomebrew.com/

Are you going to recirculate? My bag didn't burn until it got sucked up by the pump. My system is still a work in progress. Checkout my thread, perhaps you can avoid some of my mistakes. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f170/bad-kitty-brewery-ebiab-431276/

The bag arrived today. Dang! That was fast, thanks. Yes, I'm doing 5 gal batches, though I went with the 20 gal pot in order to do the occasional 10 gal batch. With the Reflectix, it really seems to hold the temperature pretty well. I'm looking forward to trying the new bag.

Pick me.

That could be an elegant solution, thanks! Ordered a wilserbrewer bag last night, 2-3/4" shorter than the height of the pot, to keep the bag away from the element and the pickup tube. I'll keep you posted.

Hi, P-J. Have you done any drawings using this SSVR? I'd like to do a simple setup with an on/off switch, a contactor, and an e-stop. I loved building your single vessel e-biab design. This SSVR setup would be for a friend's BK. Thanks.

The trials and tribulations continue. The first photo shows the solution we came up with for managing the condensation that drips back into the pot from the ventilation system. We suspended the pot lid for the last 5 minutes of the boil using a bungee. This actually worked really well for...

Here is an update from yesterday's brew day, Our system is definitely getting more stable. As you can see from the photos, we added Reflectix (2 layers) to the brew pot. Not surprisingly, this provided enough insulation that the element did not need to fire that often. We also made a hat for...

I have a 20 gallon Spike with two welds and a cutout for an element. I've done about 6 brews on it and love it. I'm no expert, but the welds seem good to me.

I had the exact same situation. Sorry I didn't see your thread sooner. It will take you about 2 minutes to swap out the face plate sticker. You remove the old one by heating it up with a hair dryer, then peeling a corner up. I used an exacto knife to peel it up.

That's smart, thanks.

Move the RTD to a tee in the valve. This will help smooth the fluctuations, but maybe not entirely. You might want to read my Bad Kitty Brewery thread for a description of my similar problems.

Thanks for all the great feedback and ideas. I think I will experiment with both a) insulation, lid on, no recirc and b) a false bottom/pizza screen. One question on the pizza screen.... Is anyone concerned about the screen being made from aluminum? I need a 16" screen and have has trouble...

Let's start with the things that went well today. First, I'm happy to report that putting the RTD in the tee worked well. The temperature was much more stable. We still did some sloshing and stirring, and occasionally turned off the element, but we did those things much, much less than in the...

Yeah, we haven't had any problems with the bag on the element. When I first started planning the build, I thought a false bottom was a requirement, but later I read several posts that said it wasn't an issue. I'm not sure if this logic is 100% accurate, but the element is not on full blast for...

Thanks, Jeffmeh. These are very similar to what I tried, but in retrospect, mine had very obvious sharp edges. The shredding problem wasn't the recirculation, but the aggressive sloshing. I think I have the bag-suck issue figured out with the strainer--now just gotta figure out how to get even...

Well, the PID is suppose to keep the mash at temperature, using the element, but that's where the difficulty has been, with the uneven temperatures between the pot and grain. That's why we've been sloshing and stirring, which seems to work well, but it is not the set it and forget it solution I...

I'm in Grand Rapids, sent you a PM.

It is a 20" pot and I've had a hard time finding a wide, reasonably priced, stainless solution. I'd welcome suggestions. The 14" cheapo cooling rack I tried had sharp edges and shredded the first bag.