brew kettle

i brew as well and have 6 of these modified kegs. All with ball valves about 2" from the bottom. You need these valves so you don't have to lift 10 or more gallons of boiling wort. You really need em, it makes life a lot easier. Go to homebrewtalk.com and look in the equipment section for how to's

michburner said:

i brew as well and have 6 of these modified kegs. All with ball valves about 2" from the bottom. You need these valves so you don't have to lift 10 or more gallons of boiling wort. You really need em, it makes life a lot easier. Go to homebrewtalk.com and look in the equipment section for how to's

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D you use these for your primary wort or just to rack?

Not sure what you mean by primary wort or rack, but it is a boil kettle. I use one as a hot liquor tank (HLT). I use another one as a boil kettle(the place i combine my runnings from my sparge(s). You could use just one keg and use buckets to transfer all this sugar water. Some people use a 3rd keggle as a mash tun by putting a false bottom in the keg with a dip tube that dips in below the false bottom to separate your grains from the wort. This allows for direct firing of the mash tun to heat up your mash to perform step mashes. You can't put a burner under a converted beverage cooler. Well, you can, but only once

If you dont want to drill the brew kettle, just use your autosiphon. I have a ball valve on mine and like it because on brew day, I dont have to sanitize my autosiphon.

How much of the top did you remove? Did you leave most of the round section or cut it as well to make the opening bigger?

My bad I missed the word KETTLE. I was trying to figure out how one would ferment with tha open top.Primary wort as I call it is the first fermentation. Rack is a vessel you pour your primary in just before it goes in the bottle. These kegs would be good for that less crud in the bottles.Sorry I need to read these better.

I had one and never put a tap in it. I think I just transferred with a sauce pan into a funnel with a screen strainer on it. This gets the hops out and prevents clogs in the drain.

I have a great brew kettle. I bought it from a company called Sabco. It's not as fancy as what they sell today.

The hole in top is made to fit a standard kitchen size pan, so you can use an off the shelf lid. If you're cutting with a sawzall, put water in the thing first -- holds down the noise.

Ball valve is necessary to empty the thing, especially if you use it as a mash tun. You put 50 lbs of grain and 15 gallons of water and you have close to 200 lbs.

I used to use it for fermenting too, prior to obtaining a dedicated 10 gallon fermenter. You just do the boil in the kettle, and put the lid on it for a few minutes at the end to sanitize it, then leave everything in the kettle with the lid on. Cool wort and pitch yeast. Works great.

I don't make beer anymore, but I've used the kettle for making wine.

There is a guy on youtube that makes a jig to run an angle grinder to cut the top off of a keg for a keggle. Looks professional.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LthGdMk_avk

I use a keg as my brew pot. I used a weld-less ball valve. The valve is pretty convenient. I have an aerator (1/4" x 2" PVC with holes drilled in it) that I put on the end of some tubing, plug the tubing into the ball valve and drain right into my primary.

You could rig up the same thing with an auto syphon. It's just a bit more to sanitize.

On a side note, I found a saws-all to be the best way to cut the top off the keg. I ruined a blade doing i,t but the grinder took forever and made a way bigger mess.