Keg manifold - please critique

[Octavius]

Of course there are slots on the underneath of the long tube.

None of this is soldered. I made it so the bottom elbow is pressing against the bottom of the keg - to stop it falling off.

I'm a bit bummed because, after draining and tilting the keg, there is still 5 pints left. Is this too much of a tithe to the Beer Gods?

I was kind of hoping there would be a syphoning effect but it stops at about the level of the bottom of the outlet.

It is not too late for me to make changes if anyone has a suggestion.

Cheers!

 

[kezgin]

i don't have any suggestions, but i'm interested to know how it works on brew day. are you going to be using a pump? i've been fighting with various pickup tube/strainer designs for the past 4 sessions, ever since i got a pump, and every time it ends up getting clogged at some point

 

[davebl]

I think you broke syphon. May want to solder some connections.

 

[Octavius]

davebl: Quite right!

I went ahead and soldered the short horizontal pipe to the elbow and also the down pipe to both elbows. On the ouside of the cooler, I also had to substitute an existing 1/2" elbow from the valve with a barb, connected to some 1/2" vinyl tubing (as recommended in a similar thread about my mash tun manifold). Using both of these modifications resulted in only a cupful of water in the bottom of the keg! Yeah, thanks!

Kezgin: Sorry, I'm not using a pump - just a gravity drop into my fermentors. I won't attempt a suggestion because I know squat about pumps. I presume you have tried slowing the pump down somewhat. Anyways, best of luck with your 5th batch.

I was going to soak all the soldered pieces in:
Oxyclean
citric acid
hot soapy water
final rinse in cold water

Difficult to get inside the pipe with a paper towel - what do other folk do to get rid of the flux, etc?

Cheers!

 

[Octavius]

Well, here's a funny thing.

We made a wheat beer yesterday and this boiling-keg manifold kept clogging up. I had to resort to repeatedly blowing through the spigot and using FlyGuy's T-syphon to get it going. Most annoying.

The recipe involved 9 lb Maris Otter and 9 lb German Wheat Malt. We had no trouble with the mashing (used 3 batch parging lots, as per BrewSmith)

I can only think there was an excess of fine material from the wheat that settled to the bottom and clogged up the slits (a previous trial showed there is only a cup of water left when the keg is drained).

There was only 3 oz of Willamette hops in there - we had used twice that in the previous Bitter type brew with no problem so it can't be the hops clogging it up.

Think I'll just raise the manifold 1/2" unless someone has any ideas.

Cheers!

 

[xumbi]

This is what I'm planning to do when I build my keggle:

dennybrew

See pics at the bottom under "Keggle detail". It's not as pretty as yours but apparently it works.

He appears to be using whole hops at least in these pics. I don't know how well it works with plugs/pellets.

Good luck!

 

[Baldy_Beer_Brewery]

Is this your mash tun or brew pot? If it is the brew pot I'd just go with a diptube and ditch the manifold.