Suicided1954
Well-Known Member
I brewed my first all-grain today. I learned so much from lurking and reading on this site. To say thanks I'm posting this. I'm surprised it hasn't been covered before but I never found it in all of my research over the last several weeks.
I have been using my shop vac as a vacuum pump for my screen printing equipment for several years now. Works great to pull a rubber blanket tight to my exposure unit. I didnt want to buy a march pump yet and didnt want to use a venturi or gravity to feed the chiller so I gave my shopvac vacuum pump a try. It worked great on the glass carboy and the bucket. I have stuck a guage on it and it pulls 2.5" mercury.
I brewed 2 batches today and used it to fill the carboy and the plastic bucket. I transferred 6 gallons from the carboy to the bucket to test the bucket. It barely sucked the top of the bucket in. I pulled 6 gallons through the chiller in 13 minutes. from 212 to 68.
I drilled about 6 holes in a 2" cap. I attached the cap to an inverted adapter stuck into the shopvac. I attached vinyl tubing via a double barbed brass fitting. I drilled extra holes so I didnt dead head the shopvac. I'll be using this to transfer to secondaries and bottling buckets too...
hopefully the pictures work...
Thanks
Darryl
I have been using my shop vac as a vacuum pump for my screen printing equipment for several years now. Works great to pull a rubber blanket tight to my exposure unit. I didnt want to buy a march pump yet and didnt want to use a venturi or gravity to feed the chiller so I gave my shopvac vacuum pump a try. It worked great on the glass carboy and the bucket. I have stuck a guage on it and it pulls 2.5" mercury.
I brewed 2 batches today and used it to fill the carboy and the plastic bucket. I transferred 6 gallons from the carboy to the bucket to test the bucket. It barely sucked the top of the bucket in. I pulled 6 gallons through the chiller in 13 minutes. from 212 to 68.
I drilled about 6 holes in a 2" cap. I attached the cap to an inverted adapter stuck into the shopvac. I attached vinyl tubing via a double barbed brass fitting. I drilled extra holes so I didnt dead head the shopvac. I'll be using this to transfer to secondaries and bottling buckets too...
hopefully the pictures work...
Thanks
Darryl
![cap.jpg](https://proxy.imagearchive.com/3b1/3b1ed626bea671e662cd77bed946e7d6.jpg)
![adapter.jpg](https://proxy.imagearchive.com/947/9473efe56e8198cb8842307e22bf89e8.jpg)
![shopvac.jpg](https://proxy.imagearchive.com/01a/01ad2d32a47e46f9805f9b95e8541b86.jpg)
![brownale.jpg](https://proxy.imagearchive.com/13a/13ad2cd9a622bd3493157b11b1c0bff5.jpg)
![bucketcarboy.jpg](https://proxy.imagearchive.com/027/027082a4efb2be945234142c55f3c915.jpg)