This turkey fryer pot was my first brew kettle from almost 10 years ago and since I upgraded, I put it up on a shelf and forgot about it. I wanted to make a keg and carboy washer and figured I'd finally use the pot instead of a bucket.
Most washer designs use a submersible pump and for good reason, but I figure why not leverage my brewing pump instead of a uni-tasker pump. The downside to what I did was the expense of the pair of bulkheads and valves. I ended up using some in-house prototype and factory second valves that didn't cost me anything. I doubt anyone would want to copy it but here's what I did:
The interior base is a square of stainless sheet with a 1/2" NPT pipe plug silver soldered on. On top of that I screwed a tee on and that attaches to the inlet bulkhead with a 4" nipple. The top of the tee also got a 3 or 4" nipple, then another tee. The top of that tee got another valve, then a compression fitting for 1/2" tube. The side port of the tee got another pipe plug where I silver soldered in a stainless hose barb tee. This tee feeds the keg gas/beer QDs for doing the keg washing.
The stainless tube sticking into the compression fitting is crimped mostly shut at the top and then I drilled a bunch of 1/16" holes down the length rather randomly.
I've seen a lot of the designs that use a bucket with the lid cut with a large hole in the middle to hold the carboys but I wanted to have the carboy sit further into the basin. I did that by installing a set of bars, actually 1/2" stainless tubing, through holes drilled into the side of the pot. As you can see from one of the pics, the carboy drainer ring sits on these nice and sturdy and then a corny keg will also sit nicely on them and they don't get in the way of the QDs.
It seems to work really well in my 5 minutes of testing but I have a lot of actually cleaning to do soon so I'll post back. Not bad for an hour of tinkering anyway.
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Most washer designs use a submersible pump and for good reason, but I figure why not leverage my brewing pump instead of a uni-tasker pump. The downside to what I did was the expense of the pair of bulkheads and valves. I ended up using some in-house prototype and factory second valves that didn't cost me anything. I doubt anyone would want to copy it but here's what I did:
The interior base is a square of stainless sheet with a 1/2" NPT pipe plug silver soldered on. On top of that I screwed a tee on and that attaches to the inlet bulkhead with a 4" nipple. The top of the tee also got a 3 or 4" nipple, then another tee. The top of that tee got another valve, then a compression fitting for 1/2" tube. The side port of the tee got another pipe plug where I silver soldered in a stainless hose barb tee. This tee feeds the keg gas/beer QDs for doing the keg washing.
The stainless tube sticking into the compression fitting is crimped mostly shut at the top and then I drilled a bunch of 1/16" holes down the length rather randomly.
I've seen a lot of the designs that use a bucket with the lid cut with a large hole in the middle to hold the carboys but I wanted to have the carboy sit further into the basin. I did that by installing a set of bars, actually 1/2" stainless tubing, through holes drilled into the side of the pot. As you can see from one of the pics, the carboy drainer ring sits on these nice and sturdy and then a corny keg will also sit nicely on them and they don't get in the way of the QDs.
It seems to work really well in my 5 minutes of testing but I have a lot of actually cleaning to do soon so I'll post back. Not bad for an hour of tinkering anyway.
View attachment 1432429868100.jpg
View attachment 1432429883054.jpg
View attachment 1432429934301.jpg