Use of thermowells

[formula155]

Hi,

I am getting ready to upgrade my brewing setup for all grain brewing and plan to use an EBC-II unit with associated temp controllers. The standard way to set this up seems to be to embed thermowells in through the side of the HLT and mash tuns, but there seem to be a couple of drawbacks to this:

1) The recommendation is to use thermal grease on the temp sensor in the thermowells. But this would seem to make cleanup difficult as I wouldn't be able to easily remove the temp sensor from the thermowell, and would therefore have to remove the thermowell for cleaning. Can anyone who uses thermowells comment on whether this is a real problem?

2) I want to use a Blichmann boilermaker with the false bottom in my mash tun. It's not clear to me that I can take the false bottom in and out for cleaning with a thermowell installed - does anyone know whether this can be done

Finally, does any use some other technique, i.e. maybe some kind of thermowell tht can be lowered into the vesssel from the top without drilling holes so it can be easily removed for cleaning?

Thanks in advance for any help,

A confused newbie.

 

[alien]

You can have thermowells inside compression fittings that slide in and out as well as unscrew. Brewer's Hardware sell the right bits.

Bit of thermal grease in the thermowell is right. No problem there. Can glue the probe in place with a little silicone if you like.