While recently riding shotgun on a brew day for a friend, Chris Stephani, I was intrigued to see that his mash tun utilized a normal half barrel keg, and had a bottom drain, based on the normal tap port of the keg used upside down. He has a flat silicon custom for that connection to a normal 1.5" TC. It drips just a very small amount, and I think he really wants to redo it, but it works. And best of all, it uses a very efficient bottom drain that leaves no lost head space or dip tube through false bottom. I was enamored...
I have had three stuck mash results in a row of late, and while I'm certain it is because of the fine grind from the LHBS (just because it is easy while there to grind, rather than use mine, and I'm going to revert back to grinding my own), I couldn't help but think about how much easier and nice a pure bottom drain would be in the MT. And best of all, the way mine sits on my brew stand, it easily has room for a bottom drainage. I just needed a 1.5" TC put in... and Chris offered to help!
So, I picked out a ferrule (had one that was longer and because my bottom of my MT keg is so close to the bottom of the skirt, decided on a shorter profile one than in the image below.
Chris had a great bit that would cut a 1.4" hole (just slightly smaller than the ID of the ferrule) that he used on his kegs for the curved sidewall with a jig to "pull" them through the keg wall and dish them and get a better flush mount, but I decided to try to just solder it on the flat of the bottom of the keg and it worked perfect!
We needed to heat the keg first, as it has a lot of thermal mass...then you heat slowly back into the ferrule.
Ultimately, the solder wicked in very well with flux and then after a little cooling and some quick clean up, we had a very good smooth food grade seemless water-tight 1.5" TC connection on the bottom of my mash tun!
So, that left only a new false bottom to construct. One, without any need of a hole for the dip tube and that I could properly support with stand-offs for even a vacuum pressure of massive stuck mash proportions...
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