Mo' Kettle, Mo' Problems ;)

[jspain3]

I just upgraded from a turkey fryer to a 15 gal Spike kettle with three piece ball valve and thermometer.

Now, I have a couple of questions before my maiden brew on the new equipment:

I only hand tightened the valve and thermometer with the Teflon tape according to the instructions. I'm trusting that even though they're not flush with the kettle the seal is tight.

Currently, I've been using an immersion wort chiller to get the wort down to 80-90 degrees (we do not have cold ground water) and then placing the pot in an ice bath to get below 70. Since I was pouring out of the top of the pot it wasn't a big deal. With the ball valve now, is an ice bath out of the question? I was wondering if I attached a sanitized hose to it first and kept the end of the hose out of the ice bath if that would work. That way, no cooled wort would come in contact with any part of the valve that was exposed to the ice bath.

Getting the wort out efficiently while avoiding trub? I plan to use hop bags or a DiY hop spider, but how does everyone else get the most wort out while filtering the trub? In looking at other threads, I liked the idea of the 90 degree elbow with hose barb.

Sorry if this topic has been covered. Whenever I searched for 'ball valve' topics, I kept finding installation threads instead of technique threads.

 

[sandyeggoxj]

To keep the valve sanitary you can spray some starsan in the output before you rack off into the fermenter.

You can get a maximizer of sorts that is an internal dip tube. That will help get more wort out.

 

[RM-MN]

Don't bother trying to keep the trub out of the fermenter unless you are washing the yeast (and even then maybe not). Those who have tried with and without trub say there is no difference in their finished beer.

 

[milldoggy]

I would rack at 80-90 and let it naturally cool down to pitching temp. Or get a cheap sump pump and pump ice water through the chiller once you get down as cold as ground water will take you.