Beer Forum

Im going to be using a converted keg for my boil kettle.

What kind of fitting should I place in the kettle?

I use pellet hops so a screen seems to be out of the question.

Should I just use a copper pick up tube?

looks good beerpal. any trouble with clogging?

positiverpr wrote:looks good beerpal. any trouble with clogging?

Don't recall that this one has ever clogged.

Call me naive, but don't you end up transferring everything out of the kettle into your fermentor with this type of pickup? I have always thought of making/using this sort of tube but it seems that your would end up with all the break material in your fermentor. Doesn't this cause you any problems? Just curious.

BadRock wrote:Call me naive, but don't you end up transferring everything out of the kettle into your fermentor with this type of pickup? I have always thought of making/using this sort of tube but it seems that your would end up with all the break material in your fermentor. Doesn't this cause you any problems? Just curious.

It is the case that everything ends up in the fermenter. If you see that as a negative than this might not be the way to go. On the plus side, it gets almost every drop of wort ot of the kettle. Bear in mind that expert brewers such as Denny Conn use similar pickups.

BTW, I no longer use this pickup as I have since gone to the Jamil-O-Chiller and use a much shorter one now.

Regarding the clogging issue; I never used this pickup with a pump, so I can't say that it would work as well if it were used with one.

Right on, thats kind of what I thought too. I use a counter flow chiller so I end up with all the cold break in my fermentor as it is but I would think adding all the hot break would mean that 1/3 of my brew was break material. I use a ring of braided SS with a piece of copper wire running through it for my pick up and it works pretty good. It will also filter out hops and most of the break material. But I see a lot of people using the copper tube design as well. Tomatoes, tomotoes!