Moving to Brew in a Basket, in a Keggle

Thanks Squeegeethree, but I don’t have that room under my grain basket now that I’ve optimized the size of the basket (which I am on the verge of ordering. I updated my sketch to show this………not to scale but conveys the idea. The curvature of the keggle bottom is exaggerated in this sketch. I will have an inch or less below the grain basket. The basket feet will be approximately 1" in height.

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The SS basket was about 12” long by 4” in diameter. There were no other drawback other than the lack of boil/bump in hops. Although getting the hops out and cleaning it can be a pain. I ended up rinsing it well and soaking in PBW.

In regards to hop utilization the temp matters as well as the surface area. If you pack the basket with too many hops you won’t get the utilization you were hoping for.

What Loppie said I’ve experienced as well. Fluid moving past and through the hops increases utilization. The more hops that are trapped inside a mass of other hops the less gets utilized. This is true in dry hopping as well IMO

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Thanks Loopie_beer and Squeegeethree, I am going with an 8" diameter x 14" tall hop basket, 400 micron mesh. :slight_smile:

I will also want to be dry hopping. Do you guys just throw your hops, pellets or cones, directly into the fermentation vessel? Or do you use a basket? I use Big Mouth Bubblers and I think I would want something like this. I know NB has a custom filter for this vessel, but it is not nearly this big in terms of volume.

Loopie_beer - regarding your 400 micron hop filter, that was for pellet hops, correct?

Correct. It was for pellet hops. In regards to your pic above you need to also account for the displacement of the basket and hops. That may be too big and will cause the beer to overflow.

I am going to hold off on the dry hop basket for a while, and maybe not do that at all. I have read accounts, and seen lots of pictures like the attached one, of people just adding leaf hops to the fermenter directly, and being careful when they transfer the beer to avoid the hops. Not sure yet about that so I will wait until I decide. Remind me, how do you dry hop at home?

I use SS conicals and still bag the hops. Cold crashing gets any material that escaped to settle.

I ferment in a stainless steel “bucket” if you will… Was it Anvils offering?..
I free range cones and pellets… There is a rotating racking tube that allows you to not suck yeast/trub off the bottom… In mine, it works very well, thank you…
And as Loopie sez, cold crash is a great step include in your brewing process.
Sneezles61

If I’m dry hopping in the bucket I use a paint strainer bag.

Most often, I use these to DH in the keg. You could probably use them in the BMB as well.

Because you can put in sooo much more hops at dry hopping time doesn’t mean you’ll have a better hoppy brew… You could actually end up having something more like you put the cuttings from the lawn, in your brew…
There’s still so much to understand about which and how much hops to use… And when… If you think moving to a basket is complex… Dig into hops!! Holy Moly…
Sneezles61

Was visiting another forum and found this 1/2" High Flow 90 -HBS90

Not sure if the dimensions suit your needs or not.

Thanks Rburrelli, I will check that out. I need the OD of the barb end of this elbow, and I sent an email to the seller asking for that. Appreciate your help, you never know.

I free range dry hop like @sneezles61. I use a filtering setup on my racking cane if needed and adjust volumes accordingly.

Well I finally installed the gas line between the propane tank and the burner, and cleaned out the burner with pressurized air. Figured that could not hurt anything. I attached a front and rear view of the propane line. Works fine, next step is to see if the burner works OK with the new heat shielding that I added on the front side of the burner. My only concern is will it get enough oxygen…worked great before this added shielding. You can see the unpainted shielding in the third and fourth photos. Next I’ll add the keggle, fill it with water, and do that plumbing test I have been talking about forever.

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I also bought a Big Mouth Bubbler Depth Charge dry hop basket, and a 21" SS spoon today. One of the vendors had a discount so I pulled the trigger.

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Hooked up the plumbing, added water to the keggle, and tried it out. The pump primed immediately and so far it works as intended. I did not have to manipulate any valves, or disconnect anything, it just primed in the recirculate configuration. The return copper elbow you see in the picture is just a temporary component, I still have to make the final version with holes in it for mash infusion. Flow rate was very strong. Did not hook up the plate chiller yet. So far so good. It got dark outside so I called it a day, and tomorrow I’ll play with it some more.

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OK, I’m sure this will get somebody’s attention, but here goes. I am considering using my 800 micron grain basket as a hop basket/spider. Reminder - my grain basket is 800 micron because I want maximum wort flow during the mash in my RIMS setup.

It is not common, but there are 800 micron hop baskets for sale out there, so somebody must be using them to get better hop utilization. (I know that 300 and 400 micron mesh is the most common sizes used for pellet and leaf hops).

I realize I will have more trub, but not enough to clog my pumps and valves. This size mesh will force me to filter out some of the trub before I use the plate chiller, but I was planning to do that anyway with a cheaper 400 micron filter. Comments/feedback/opinions please?

What is the hop basket for your fermenter? Perhaps… You just put that in your kettle and recirculate to remove more or the trub… Then through the chiller into your fermenter… I’ll remind you… it’s very seldom you can get crystal clear wort into the fermenter… I know, we’ve seen pictures of that on brulosophy… Even the guy posting was asked how’d he do that and there wasn’t a reply… Trickery in my opinion…
Did I say it’s going to get cloudy from the yeast? Back to square one…
Sneezles61