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Just got a smaller water pump today. If the silicone has finally dried I should be using it on a batch this weekend.

Keg and force carb with a bottle of CO2. No need for a bottling bucket and no need for bottling sugar.

Got the spray ball working today too. Here's the pump doing its magic: It takes a little bit to adjust the flow to the point that it doesn't pump all the cleaner out of the bucket, but it works well Spray ball in action: From a quick look, it looks like it covers everything quite well...

Pump and ball valves work too. There's a small leak I need to fix out of the cooler and some programming to do, but otherwise the concept works.

Well, the chiller actually works. First run through of the chiller and it's actually cooling the water I'm using for the test. The ball valves also work too. Once the water is at temp I'll start testing the pump.

New ball valve is in place as well as the new driver board. Unfortunately it looks like the o-rings aren't going to keep the attachment for the lid air tight. So, I siliconed that in place and am now waiting for everything to dry. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to do the trial run.

Replacement ball valves finally showed up today. With any luck, I'll be able to give the system a trial run this weekend.

Nothing some foam pipe insulation won't fix if I need to.

And the remaining conical fittings are done: Now all that's left is the tri-clover blowoff valve fittings and the replacement ball valves. Thankfully the ball valves were shipped from China yesterday. So, hopefully the boat gets here fast.

I generally brew with RO water. So, I'm stuck with buckets.

Thermowell in place: Thank god this fit. Just barely makes it through the lid: Quick disconnects in place on the lid: Still need the tri-clover connection for the blow off tube in the center fitting, but those will hopefully ship soon. Now I just need to finish connecting the fittings on...

I'd stick with buckets. Much less hassle to clean/sanitize than a 30 ft hose. On the plus side, it'll be a lot easier to keg the beer from a conical instead of a carboy. No need for racking canes anymore. As it is I brew in the garage and don't have a water line out there. So, I carry 5 gal...

Are you getting much grain sucked under the false bottom? I have the same false bottom but use a 20 gal stainless pot instead of a keggle and actually haven't had any issues with it. A weizen with 50% wheat, no rice hulls, and I run the pump full blast during dough-in.

~300lbs of grain and 18lbs of hops. The wife wasn't entirely happy with that much freezer space being taken up by hops, but at least she doesn't mind when I brew now since it means she gets some space back.

Yeah, the main thing I don't like about the conicals is that the screws for the lid go all the way through the plastic. Thankfully beer shouldn't ever get that high though. All in all, it should be pretty easy to clean.

I wouldn't try any of the strong acid washes. I plan on using PBW, which others have used without an issue. I just didn't want to deal with 15-20 gallons of it at a time. So, I'm going to try using a spray ball.

The pump I have is a 1/4 horsepower submersible pump usually used for draining small pools. ~$45 on amazon. I have a ball valve to control flow and a pressure gauge on the line to control the line pressure. So, hopefully it'll work pretty well. If I need something smaller I plan on using the...

If it's not one thing, it's another. It appears that the bad ball valve took 3 channels of the driver board with it. So, I'll need another one of those. Hopefully OSC will get them in stock again soon.

You could, but that would actually add 2 SSRs. The ball valves are driven directly off a 12v driver board (https://www.oscsys.com/store/product/1002030). So, no SSR needed for those. Also, the pump takes up a decent amount of volume in the cooler...

Spray Ball: I also hooked up the fittings for the blow off tubing while I wait for the tri-clover fittings to show up. The bad news is that it appears one of the three motorized ball valves isn't working. I was testing them via the BCS and the one on Ferm 3 moved slightly once and then quit...