Marking brew kettle

[Bobb25]

I have a stainless steel 7 gallon , triple bottom brew kettle. What are suggestions for marking various fill levels on the inside ? Could I simply scratch the side with an awl, or would that introduce problems ?
Bob

 

[MrHadack]

Why scratch the metal at all? Just get yourself one of those white plastic mash paddles and make the markings on it instead. Pour a gallon into the kettle, stick the mash paddle in, mark it, our another gallon in, mark it again, and so on. Just be aware the markings would only work for that pot since other pots might have different dimensions.

 

[kombat]

I bought a wooden dowel at Home Depot and cut notches in it for each gallon mark.

I measured out water a gallon at a time and added it to my kettle to figure out where to cut the notches. The neat thing is, once you get above the kettle hardware that affects volume displacement (false bottom, dip tube, whatever), you don't even need to keep adding liquid anymore. You can just measure the distance between notches and keep adding new notches that same distance apart.

 

[Spartangreen]

I use a Yardstick

 

[geoffm33]

I do this, but inverted so I don't need to stick the wooden dowel into the wort. So pour in a gallon and stick the dowel down until it just touches the water level. Notch the dowel where the top of the kettle is. Pour another gallon and notch again. Etc.

 

[cgg]

+1 on marking dowel so it doesn't need to go into the liquid.

 

[Jayhem]

I also marked my mash paddle with marks at each gallon level. I'm using it to stir the wort and hop additions anyway so why not?

 

[geoffm33]

That works fine. But for me I used a random wood dowel with sharpie marking for the gallons. So dipping it in the wort is out. So I do the inverted method.

 

[Bobb25]

Thank you guys,.....that's thinking out of the box,...err kettle !

 

[MrHadack]

I do this, but inverted so I don't need to stick the wooden dowel into the wort. So pour in a gallon and stick the dowel down until it just touches the water level. Notch the dowel where the top of the kettle is. Pour another gallon and notch again. Etc.

Wicked smaht!

 

[dstranger99]

I fill 1 gallon milk containers, and mark each gallon on the outside with a marker.