Keggle Sight Glass Improved

I created my own homemade keggle sight glass a few years back. Since then it has performed pretty good with the exception of a single flaw. There is a plastic compression washer installed that forms a water tight seal around the ridged plastic tubing that you can see in the pics here.

The original gauge that broke under pressure

Because this area of the sight gauge is heated to sparge water temperatures (170f) and then cooled to room temperatures, the washer gets soft and a small leak (drip) occurs during my brew session. Not enough to be a problem but enough to annoy me. After multiple brew session, I end up over tightening the compression nut to solved the leak and as you can see in the picture, this practice eventually ended up breaking the tubing.




I came up with a solution to this problem while I was in Mexico this year. The fact is, I was trying to come up with an alternative to the ridged plastic tubing since I couldn't locate any in San Miguel. What I could find was the flexible tubing and so improvise a new gauge that could utilize this new material. It turned out to be a much simpler design but I had one big question, would it leak under brewing conditions? That I couldn't answer until I got back to Santa Cruz and tried it out on my brew sculpture.

New gauge assembled

New gauge with copper sleeve

You can see from the image on the right that I'm using the same copper sleeve, (the one I made a video of here) to hold the tubing in place. It slips nicely over the tubing and is held upright with the eye-bolt located above. This new design has a slight change to incorporate flex tubing rather than ridged. The tubing is forced onto a barbed fitting that is connected to the elbow. The elbow is connected to the keggle as before with a compression nut. That's it, simple. So, I did a test run today after installing this new sight glass. I added enough water to the keggle to rise above the gauge and then heated the water to 180f.

Tubing forced onto barbed fitting

It worked great. Water line is still very visible and although the tubing got soft in this high heat, it didn't leak at all and stayed securely in place on the barbed fitting.

If you've followed me in making my original sight glass and you're experiencing the same problem, an easy fix is making the adaptions to yours with a barbed fitting and flexible tubing that fits tightly. during assembly, I heated the tubing I used to soften it enough to make it easier to secure to the barbed fitting as it was very tight.

All of the parts shown are 3/8" including the barbed fitting. If you make one of these, let me know how the results were for you.

All parts are all 3/8" & washer should be semi-hard

 If you have any questions, feel free to email me. I also appreciate all comments. Cheers!

Hoptologist DIPA

The best thing about returning from Mexico is access to the unbelievably large selection of the best beers in the world. While I applaud Mexico for taking its slow but tenacious initial steps towards breaking out of the dualistic stranglehold that is Modelo and Cuauhtemoc Moctezuma breweries, they have a very long way to go compared to the available beers here in California.  My head spins as I walk the isles of Whole foods or BevMo, overwhelmed with the plethora of stellar beers found locally and imported from around the world. I'm like a man dying of thirst when I return from San Miguel and realize how limited I've been for the past few months.

The first thing I reach for on the shelves of my local beer store is a double India pale ale. My desire for hops is a need that must be satisfied to fill the bitter (pun intended) void left by most of the Mexican beers I've been drinking. What caught my eye was Knee Deep's Hoptologist DIPA and although I'd never heard of it before, I took the chance that it was good based on the odd label image and the somewhat disturbing choice of a name for a DIPA.

As it turns out, this beer was delicious in all of the ways I like this style. The aroma was evident in the form of pine resin with some subtle fruitiness. Huge hop presence in the form of tasty grapefruit, tangerine and pine. Bitter sweet with caramel malts that tried their best to stand up to the crazy amount of hop flavor. Beautiful light copper color with a brilliant clarity. Knee Deep Brewing is out of Lincoln, California and began brewing in March of 2011. They are planning to eventually brew in Reno, Nevada at least they projected to move there by the end of 2011.

After searching around on the Knee Deep web site I found that this beer took first place in the double IPA competition during the S.F. beer week and held at The Bistro in Hayward, Ca.. Interestingly, followed by Pliney the Elder in second place. I have to admit that I've got a lot of respect and admiration for Pliney but I'm having to agree with the judges in this case and Hoptologist may be replacing Pliney as my 'go to' IIPA.

As a side note, I've got another beer tasting class scheduled for the end of April and am racking my brain to come up with a unique and hard to find selection of beers from the classic styles. I know that one for my list will be Knee Deep's Hoptologist. Cheers!