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s/s braid in boiler

MaltLicker

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I’m making a five foot length of s/s braid from plumbing line that I will attach to valve at bottom of my Euro 13.5 gallon boil keggle. 

The braid wraps around three times at the bottom and should sit mostly in the convex curvature at the bottom of the keg. 

My objective is to be able to drain the boiler while the s/s braid keeps the trub and hops debris in the gunk in the bottom of boiler. 

Anyone doing something like this with a s/s plumbing braid in the boiler?  I’m a little concerned the braid will clog up and stop flowing. 

I was going to Oetiker clamp it to some s/s nozzles. 
 
I made one. My experience is it got kinked &  flattened and the holes expanded...likely caused by my mishandling and poor storage and the weight of the thing with couplings joining shorter sections and fittings on the ends.  But I am not gentle with my equipment.  It now is retired to the bottom of my retired mash tun storage box.  It never did work too well with pellets.  Now I use whole hops and strain with an elbow fitting topped by a coupler with a small piece of SS scrubbie stuffed loose into the coupler.  Hope you have better luck.
 
If you want you could build a hop spider.  It keeps a lot of the hops particles from getting into your fermenter.  Or, use a funnel with an inline strainer.

Mark
 
I've been using the s/s scrubby for a while with great success, but it's failed me twice recently.  Just completely stopped up. 

I've also been considering using a hop sack to keep them somewhat contained.  Will likely try both on a low-hop kolsch here soon.  Thanks.
 
I use the hop sack/spider sometimes too.  A lot of people use them with success but I get a drastic utilization loss.  The scrubbie plugged up once on me too.  What a pain. 10 gallons ended up over the fence.  I wrote it off that I had the scrubbie compressed too tightly.
 
This is my new kettle that I just finished putting together. I'm looking forward to a pale ale that ill be using it for for the first time this sat. Ill have to report back on its performance. I used a s/s braid in the bottom of my cooler mlt for the longest time. I had to put a s/s coiled wire on the inside to keep it from getting crushed, so I did the same thing in the bk just to make sure I wouldn't have any issues. I only ever use whole hops so I don't really think ill have any clogging issues. Hoppy brewing.
 

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Well yesterday I brewed 11g pale ale. All said and done there where 6.5oz of whole hops in the kettle when I transferred to the carboys, and this is what the kettle looked like... The wort was as clear as I have ever seen it and didn't have any issues with the braid clogging or slowing.
 

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Curly55 said:
Well yesterday I brewed 11g pale ale. All said and done there where 6.5oz of whole hops in the kettle when I transferred to the carboys, and this is what the kettle looked like... The wort was as clear as I have ever seen it and didn't have any issues with the braid clogging or slowing.

Interesting pictures/result :)
R, Slurk
 
Curly55 said:
Well yesterday I brewed 11g pale ale. All said and done there where 6.5oz of whole hops in the kettle when I transferred to the carboys, and this is what the kettle looked like... The wort was as clear as I have ever seen it and didn't have any issues with the braid clogging or slowing.

Very cool.  My keggle has a side dip tube that helps but I still get debris.

Mark
 
I use a bazooka tube on my drain it works great except once it clogged but I had a rediculous amount of whole hops in a 10 gallon batch
 
Well, I think I learned what has made the scrubby start failing me.  Look at the difference between new and used scrubbies.  Came from same package.  I have used the original one since I adopted the idea, and it's visibly worn out and I can see light thru it, so I figure hops dust is getting inside it more easily and clogging it up.  Goodbye faithful servant.............

Also attached is the braid I put together, but I saw on a site that sells them that they say it won't work with pellets.  When I use my leaf hops again, I will try it. 



 
malt licker looks good, but you got some kind of bug on those photos your postin,weird nikki minaj stuff
 
Nice work on the braid.  Where did you find one that length?  What is the diameter? I had to string together several shorter ones for my attempt. I had to keep an eye on the screw on the hose clamp and replaced them often.  They must not be stainless
 
I had a stuck mash on my bazooka once, so I built a (very ugly, sewed-it-myself) BIAB bag to line my mash tun. It's solved the problem. If I get a lot of trub through the SS scrubbie in my kettle, I rinse and sanitize my mash tun and bag, then run the wort through it to clear it up. The pouring and draining aerates the wort nicely also.
 
KernelCrush said:
Nice work on the braid.  Where did you find one that length?  What is the diameter? I had to keep an eye on the screw on the hose clamp and replaced them often.  They must not be stainless

I stared at the various tubing lengths at Lowe's in plumbing aisle for a while comparing $/foot.  I think I went with a dishwasher supply line that was about $13. 

I want to replace this regular hose clamp with an Oetiker clamp but didn't have that size handy. 

The end of the braid has one of those s/s racking tube screens on it.  The braid went right in and the cut-ends of the braid grabbed the screen nicely. 
 
The end of the braid has one of those s/s racking tube screens on it.

It looks factory made.  Where did you get the ss racking tube screen?  Super good fit with no clamp.  I use a ss end plug adding to the weight.  It ended up like an anvil.  Worked good with whole hop but way too heavy. 
 
http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?cPath=178_33_82_88&products_id=13453

 


The new scrubby worked well, and the elbow pointed downward held it in place and lower than just tying it to the nipple threads. 

I could see clearly through the last dregs of the wort that went into the hydro tube. 
 
I enjoyed reading this thread, but, have some questions. I can see using a braid/scrubby/slit pipe in the boiler to prevent larger stuff like leaf hops from stopping the flow when draining the wort but do these devices really hold back trub and cold break? I had a copper tube with saw kerf cuts and it stopped nothing (I do use a hop bag) so just this weekend I modified it to be an open tube like the Blichmann uses.

As a side note - I brewed this weekend and watched the keggle as it was almost done draining and noticed there wasn't a pile of trub in the center of the pot even though I whirl-pooled it well and let it sit for a good 30 minutes. I also noticed that the cold break was what I call in solution with some good wort so I can't see how you can avoid cold break material in the primary without sacrificing quite a bit of good wort. If a scrubby works on cold break I'm up for a try.

Thanks,

Mike
 
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