Switching to a 10 gallon cooler, level/temp gauge placement question

[Munkee915]

I currently have a 70qt Coleman Xtreme cooler I use as my mash tun. This thing has been great but I think it's a bit overkill for my 5 gallon batches and takes up a lot of space on my bench. Since I will be getting a 10 gal igloo cooler to use as an HLT I decided to convert to a 10 gal for my MLT as well. I was looking over how to place a temp probe and sight glass and it seems it involves drilling a few extra holes in the cooler which I dont really feel like doing. I was wondering if there is any downside to using a cross at the outlet and running everything off of that?

Looking at using this. One end would go to the cooler, the opposite to the valve. Then I would run a compression fitting on one side for the sight glass, and putting a small thermowell in the other for my temp probe. The probe would be going to an STC-1000 which I use for reading temps at the moment but will someday trigger a pump in my poor mans HERMS setup I'm building.

 

[Bobby_M]

Don't do it. You're talking about hanging a couple pounds of hardware off of a single spot in a plastic vessel. You'll end up flexing everything too much. Not only that but sight glasses that share a bulkhead with a drain do not read correctly when draining.

 

[dmcman73]

I have a 10 Gal Home Depot special round cooler that I use for my MT. Off the original hole for the valve I have a weedless bulkhead that has a T coming off it then into a valve. If you can picture it, on the tail side of the T I have a small RTD thermo coupler screwed into it that attaches to my brewing panel. The bulkhead is screwed into the T inline with the valve for ta straight through. There is some weight on it but since I have it all on a rig, I have a small block of wood under the T for support. The only time you have to worry about real flexing is when there is hot water in the MT that will soften the plastic.

I then drilled another hole towards the top of the cooler just below the lid where I have another bulkhead attached to a valve. Inside I have a 90 degree elbow coming off the bulkhead and a barbed nipple with a short piece of 1/2" silicone tubing with a stainless steel float ball at the other end of it. This tube sits on the grain bed and the float ball insures that is stays above it and I use this to sparge. The valve on the outside of this set up allows me to easily throttle the water coming from the pump so that I can watch inside the cooler.

I'm not sure how useful a sightglass would be on a MT as I've heard that they can get plugged up with grain. A sight glass on a HLT (or other means to measure water) would be just as good, as you pump/gravity drain the water into the MT, you can see how much water is draining out of the HLT to measure.

 

[augiedoggy]

I have a 10 Gal Home Depot special round cooler that I use for my MT. Off the original hole for the valve I have a weedless bulkhead that has a T coming off it then into a valve. If you can picture it, on the tail side of the T I have a small RTD thermo coupler screwed into it that attaches to my brewing panel. The bulkhead is screwed into the T inline with the valve for ta straight through. There is some weight on it but since I have it all on a rig, I have a small block of wood under the T for support. The only time you have to worry about real flexing is when there is hot water in the MT that will soften the plastic.

I then drilled another hole towards the top of the cooler just below the lid where I have another bulkhead attached to a valve. Inside I have a 90 degree elbow coming off the bulkhead and a barbed nipple with a short piece of 1/2" silicone tubing with a stainless steel float ball at the other end of it. This tube sits on the grain bed and the float ball insures that is stays above it and I use this to sparge. The valve on the outside of this set up allows me to easily throttle the water coming from the pump so that I can watch inside the cooler.

I'm not sure how useful a sightglass would be on a MT as I've heard that they can get plugged up with grain. A sight glass on a HLT (or other means to measure water) would be just as good, as you pump/gravity drain the water into the MT, you can see how much water is draining out of the HLT to measure.

Hmm... I had this exact setup...small block of wood and all... even have the float sensor but I attached it to adjustable locline... I'm currently building a new setup and think I'll be switching to silicone hose with some sort of manifold that sits on the grain bed with the float sensor.