Sight glass heatshield

[sorefingers23]

I fired up my new brewstsnd last night, with bg14 burners and noticed that my sight glass gets way to hot and will melt during an hour boil. I'm gonna make a gear shield and just wanted to hear what you guys are doing to prevent your sight glass from melting

 

[kh54s10]

Haven't had that problem with mine.

 

[Vale71]

Glass melts at around 1500°C. If you really reach such temperatures then I expect your boil will be really, really vigorous.
Are you sure it's actually made of glass and not plastic?

 

[sorefingers23]

It's plastic

 

[Vale71]

And that's your solution right there. Get a glass made of actual glass.
BTW what's the sight glass for in your setup?

 

[sorefingers23]

I use it on my boil kettle, to make sure I have the right volume pre boil

 

[Vale71]

That's one more reason to switch to actuall glass. Plastics have a tendency to leak chemicals that one should not be drinking. If it's actually melting at boling temperature then it's probably leaking tons of them and that's not good at all.

 

[sorefingers23]

It's more because the flame passes the kettle just enough to get the sight glass hot enough to melt.

An actual glass sight glass isn't a bad idea though

 

[day_trippr]

There can be beau coup hot spillage around kettle bottoms with a bg14. New users usually fry their vinyl ball valve handle covers first
But even with glass sight gauges if you don't shield them you may find the wort boiling therein.

My Blichmann burners came with small sheets of stainless steel made to shield the ball valve and the sight gauge...

Cheers!

 

[sorefingers23]

There can be beau coup hot spillage around kettle bottoms with a bg14. New users usually fry their vinyl ball valve handle covers first
But even with glass sight gauges if you don't shield them you may find the wort boiling therein.

My Blichmann burners came with small sheets of stainless steel made to shield the ball valve and the sight gauge...

Cheers!

Yah these burners are badass, I've been using a regular turkey fryer for years, tried the bg 14 yesterday and was impressed, took under 15 mins to bring 20 liters to a boil.

The heat shield I made are big enough to shield the sight glass/thermometer and the ball valve.

When you say hot spillage do you mean from boil overs, or coming out of the sight glass?

 

[day_trippr]

I mean the hot exhaust "spilling" out around the kettle bottom...

Cheers!

 

[brewbama]

Bobby at Brewhardware has heat shields.

 

[sorefingers23]

Bobby at Brewhardware has heat shields.

Yah I saw those, if the ones I made don't work out, Im gonna get some.

 

[kh54s10]

Haven't had that problem with mine.

I take that back.... I made a heat shield years and years ago. I forgot all about that. I just took a small sheet of aluminum and attached it to my burner. A turkey fryer.