A Few Sight Glass ?'s

Northern Brewer General
1

Up to now I’ve been measuring the volume of my boil by measuring down from the lip in a few spots and performing some quick calcs to figure it out. Call me lazy, but I’d much rather have something nice and easy like a sight glass. I have a few questions though.

  1. Can I run a T from my already drilled pickup tube hole, or will that cause problems when I recirculate with my pump.

  2. Does the liquid in the pickup tube boil? If not, how are you sure the nasties are killed in the wort held in the sight glass tube? If it does, won’t it boil over and create a mess?

  3. How careful do I have to be not to melt the, seemingly standard, polycarb tubing.

  4. Do you all like your sight glasses? What problems do they present? Is there something better?

2
  1. dunno
  2. yep, it boils
  3. mine came with a heat shield (www.brewhardware.com)
  4. Yep, I really like mine. Admittedly there are other ways to accomplish the same thing, but the sight glass makes it easy.
3

[quote=“blizzardofoz63”]

  1. Can I run a T from my already drilled pickup tube hole, or will that cause problems when I recirculate with my pump. You may also pull air through the sight glass causing priming problems.

  2. Is there something better?[/quote]

  3. If you do, when you run the pump the level in the sight glass won’t reflect the level in the kettle.

  4. I use a length of copper tube with marks on it to measure volumes in my kettle. Simple, easy to keep clean, nearly indestructible.