Boil kettle ball valve help

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stevedasleeve

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Greetings! After almost 5 years I have finally put a ball valve on my kettle - no more siphoning into the carboys...!

I have a few questions that may seem stupid simple but since I'll be brewing soon I want to make sure I'm ready to go:

1. Sanitation: I'll be cooling the wort with an immersion chiller so the wort will be cold going out of the spigot. I assume I need to sanitize the ball valve and spigot before getting the wort in...right? And the hose of course.

2. I also assume I should disassemble, soak and sanitize the ball valve after each batch right? Or can I simply clean it with the kettle - PBW soak and out the spigot - without taking it apart each brew day?

3. If I add a plate chiller can I gravity feed it, and if so - no pump - how do you clean and sanitize the chiller?

4. If I add a Blichmann hoprocket can I also gravity feed it, and then pass the output to the plate chiller or do I need a pump for this?

5. The assembly on the pot goes like this: valve is wrapped, O rings on either side, followed by backnuts on either side, spigot on outside (!) No leaks. Since the assembly came with no instructions I figured this was the way - OK?

6. Anything I need to look out for or take into consideration?

This is on a Bayou 10 gallon kettle which sits on an induction burner with a 1000 watt bucket warmer to help with the boil FWIW. I'm building a 1500 Watt stick next week.

Cheers and thanks for your guidance,

Steve da sleeve
 
Hi Steve, a few months ago we briefly met at stonebrewer's when we were picking up our bulk grains.

There are a lot of questions there, and feel free to adapt to your work flow.

1. Make sure the valve is clean, which is best done right after brewing. I use a brush that goes all the way in to give it a good scrub. Pay attention to any exposed (inside) threads that contact the wort. If you heat your mash and sparge water in your BK, it will take care of most of your sanitization there. Plus the heat transferred during the boil should do the rest. You can always spray sanitizer in the valve or drain some through before you start heating the mash water.

As long as your hose is clean, you could immerse it in Starsan. I always do that before I store it (drip dry). Then a dunk on brew day. The end that goes into your fermentor needs to be sanitized when you're ready to drain the wort, as usual.

You have a ball valve and a spigot?

2. I only remove and clean the valve (I have a 3-piece) every 5-7 brews or when I find it necessary. There is really no need to remove the bulkhead. That area gets boiled each time. Just clean it with the kettle. A brush will help.

3. You can gravity feed a plate chiller, but it will be slow, and if too much hop debris gets in it may plug up slowly. With a pump you can drain faster, plus it helps with cleaning. The biggest problem is to get the wort down to your pitching temps in one pass, with or without a pump. Tap water in our region is 70+° in the summer. So you need either an after-chiller loaded with ice, which I prefer to pre-chilling, or cool down your 80° wort in your fermentor to where you want it to be. In the winter it may be OK.

I now recirculate (with a pump) to chill the whole kettle. I used to pump straight to the carboy, but to knock the last 10° down once it is in there takes forever. So chill in your kettle to your pitching temp and then drain or pump to your fermentor. Saves lots of time in the end.

Note on plate chillers vs. other methods:
I'm not really 100% sure if a plate chiller, or a counterflow one, is any better than using an immersion one. The simplicity and ease of use of an immersion chiller vs. the hassle of an exterior chiller are to be considered.
Yeah, I like my plate chiller and it is fast. But cleaning it, the pump, and all the extra fittings and hoses to make it work are a trade-off. I just outfitted the whole plate chiller/pump setup with camlocks to get rid of barbs forever. That makes it a bit better and looks awesome, but was not free.

4. In theory you should be able to run your wort through the hoprocket by gravity. I've no experience with them. Not sure if there is too much restriction. Depends on how tight you pack it too. Together with a plate chiller it may be a bit much for gravity alone, and end up with a trickle.

5. Not sure. I've read about inside, outside, and both sides. For some reason I think it should be inside only, but then my conical needs the o-ring on the outside or it will leak.

6. Yeah, I'm afraid you don't have enough heat for 7 gallon boils. I've read that an 1800W induction plate is not enough for 7 gallon boils. With a heat stick they seem to get it moving. You're only at 2500 watt, which may or may not be enough.

I'm using a glass stove top and it has a large triple element. I can sustain a 7 gallon boil but need the lid on part way, part time, to keep it rolling. I think that element is 3000W. Plus I wrap my kettle in Reflectix and large bubble wrap.

Any chance on building a 2000W (on a 20A circuit) heatstick?
 
Excellent info, thanks IslandLizard!

<<6. Yeah, I'm afraid you don't have enough heat for 7 gallon boils. I've read that an 1800W induction plate is not enough for 7 gallon boils. With a heat stick they seem to get it moving. You're only at 2500 watt, which may or may not be enough.

I'm using a glass stove top and it has a large triple element. I can sustain a 7 gallon boil but need the lid on part way, part time, to keep it rolling. I think that element is 3000W. Plus I wrap my kettle in Reflectix and large bubble wrap.

Any chance on building a 2000W (on a 20A circuit) heatstick?>>

Interestingly I have been using the 1000W bucket warmer on my 1800W induction burner these last couple of years and I can get to a boil and keep it robust enough to drive off DMS etc. even on all pilsner beers. This new pot is a little bigger but my boil volume will remain the same - 7.75-8 gallons. Moving up to a 1500W heat stick will give me 50% more than the bucket warmer so I am not expecting a problem, but of course I'll find out soon enough. I actually ordered a 1750W element for sh!ts and grins and plan on building that one with a slightly different form factor after I do the 1500W one...

Incidentally I love the combination of heat stick and induction since it gives me a way to control the boil. I set the induction burner on full (10) initially and then end up lowering it to 3 or 4 during the boil giving me about an 8% boil off per hour.

Thanks again for your excellent response man. I'm just toying with the new options at this point - a plate chiller does seem to be a bit too much work and my 50 ft immersion chiller works great so I am not likely to switch just yet. The Hoprocket though seems a very elegant means of filtering out the troub/hop gunk while adding more hop complexity at the same time. I'll probably get one to try it out soon enough after I get 5 or so brews done on this new system to lock into the new set of numbers...!


Hey if anyone uses a Hoprocket without a pump jump in.

Cheers!
Steve
 
Excellent info, thanks IslandLizard!...

You're very welcome.

I didn't know you had an 1800W induction plate. Yeah, with another 1750W to boot on a heatstick you'd be fine.

If possible, try to see a plate chiller with pump etc. in action at one of your brew friends, to get an idea if you like it. It's way more involved than an IC.

For example you would need a good way to keep the hops in your kettle and out of your pump and chiller, while maintaining a good flow rate. Those hop baskets are promising, or a hop taco.

I'm working on putting together a hop taco to keep hop debris out of my pump and chiller. The last time during chilling my hop screen folded over and hops clogged the pinched area totally shut. I had to remove the screen to get any flow. That meant a load of hops made it out of the kettle. After that I was backwashing the plate chiller with hot PBW for an hour, back and forth, to get all the gunk out.

Have fun playing with your new acquisitions! You're gonna love that valve, and wonder why you didn't put one in earlier. :) You need to fasten a dip tube or so to get to the bottom. I use a street elbow, which is just long enough. Otherwise a good tilt on your kettle to get the last gallon out works well too.
 
My brew day went very well, heat stick + induction rocks - got to a full boil of 8 gallons in 25 mins and switched the induction burner in low to maintain a nice rolling boil for 90 mins. And what a difference a ball lock is vs siphoning! Without a dip tube I collected 6 gallons leaving 3 quarts of cold break and hop sludge, no tipping or filtering needed just opened it up and filled the carboy.

Thanks for your advice!

Cheers,
Steve
 
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