I am adding a weldless ss valve to my 10 gallon brew kettle. I plan on draining the cooled wort (using a whirpool chiller) right into the carboy, leaving the hops/cold break/etc in the kettle. My question is, how far up the kettle should I drill the hole for the valve. Its a 10 gallon kettle and I typically brew 5.5 to 6 gallons of beer and put about 5.25g into the carboy.

Thanks in advance!

I guess that will depend on the curve of the bottom of your kettle. If your goal is to keep the trub and hops out of the wort, you will probably want to get of make a pick up tube that will work to siphon the wort from the bottom of the pot. This link is the instruction page for Northern Brewers kettle valve kit:

http://www.northernbrewer.com/documenta ... lkhead.pdf

Hope this helps,

I'd take a look at the bookmakers since they already come with a side pickup. I'm assuming that you will not be collecting from the center since that is where the trub cone will be from the whirlpool. Also the valve placement is that big of a deal as long as you are filling below the pickup tube (transferring with tubing that extends below the kettle and not off the valve itself).

Add 0.5 (or 0.75) gallon to your kettle and make a mark. Theoretically that would be the bottom of the hole for your valve, but realistically that last bit of wort takes a long time to drain out. I would use the above mark as the center.