Boil Keggle thoughts

killebrew · Feb 15, 2016

I am in the process of building my brew system (again). I have 3 kegs (all new) b/c I got them for a great deal, and cheaper than I could have gotten 15 gallon pots.
I am going to do bottom drain, that I have made up my mind on for the HLT and MLT. I have scoured the site for everything I can find and can only find examples of bottom drain HLT and MLTs.
I am torn now on bottom drain boil keggle. I want to whirlpool and know that the 2 don't go together.

Would using a hop spider and a jaybird false bottom in the BK help? Would it be worth it? Is there anyone that has done the bottom drain keggle than can give me their opinions.

Thank you in advance for all help and thoughts.

day_trippr · Feb 15, 2016

There are some spot-on threads on the subject extant, including this one.
[Not trying to short-stop this thread or anything, but that one's pretty much a must-read...]

Cheers!

killebrew · Feb 15, 2016

day_trippr said:
There are some spot-on threads on the subject extant, including this one.
[Not trying to short-stop this thread or anything, but that one's pretty much a must-read...]

Cheers!

Thanks. I appreciate it. I've done searches with any variation of bottom drain boil keggle I could think of and have read every thread I could find but nothing that made it clear to me. So much that I had to stop looking at my laptop cause I thought my eyes were going to bleed. lol.

spittybug · Feb 15, 2016

I have a bottom drain boil keggle and wouldn't have it any other way. I don't whirlpool, I strain out the crap. Early in the boil I recycle from the bottom, through the pump and back into the top of the keggle. I simply hold a fine mesh sieve in the flow for a couple of minutes. It catches all of the debris that came over from mashing, leaving my wort nice and clear. For hopping I use a stainless cooking utensil holder from Walmart with a painter's mesh bag within it. It hangs in the kettle from a rod across the top. No hop debris therefore. Doing the recycle at the end of the boil also aerates it before passing through the herms coil which is now sitting in a cold water HLT. Dribble it into my corny keg (which I ferment in) and I'm plenty aerated. Yeast take off like crazy in about 20 hrs. Trub is virtually all yeast and nothing else. :mug:

afro_lou · Feb 15, 2016

I'm in the same boat myself. I decided to go with bottom drain HLT and MLT, with a side drain BK. I really like whirlpooling, and I don't really like hop spiders (no real reason, just personal preference, used one for a long time but don't anymore). What my plan is is to go with an elbow in the BK from the outlet port and put a screen on there to help filter any bits that don't make it to the trub cone. Recirculating during the last 15 minutes of the boil should help with getting that cone going too.

killebrew · Feb 16, 2016

Thank you for the replies and day_trippr thank you for the link. That thread was exactly what I was looking for.
I am going to go ahead and do the bottom drain and not whirlpool. I'm going to go with the hop spider for now. Worst case scenario I can always sell the BK that I make and get another one and do the side drain and whirlpool.