I am slightly screwed a bit, called bargain fittings and their cooler kit will not fit my Coleman 56 qt wheeled (not extreme) cooler. The hole is 25 mm or 0.98". Too big for their cooler kit. Their advise, buy another cooler or drill a new hole. Wall thickness ~0.5". Now my option maybe a #5.5 rubber holed stopper. Jam some silicon tubing through it. The BF guy said all the vinyl MLT guys are getting the BHP junk in their beer. Any ideas what I could do other than a new cooler? Mike
I have the same cooler and I took some beverage line that fit snugly in the drain, shoved it through the drain and put an in line plastic stopcock on it to control the flow. For the inside i took a short length of copper tubing, clamped one end to the beverage line and the other end to a stainless braid, that's it.
Different cooler, but I use rubber stoppers and a copper tube in my mashtun... 4+ years with the same stoppers and not one leak to date.
I use the stopper and vinyl tubing in mine with a nylon in line valve for opening/closing the MLT, and SS braid on the inside. I got my design from Denny Conn who's been using it for like 15 years. If I remember correctly most of the guys in our club use the same set up. Not sure if the BHP thing is accurate, but if it doesn't kill ya, something else will.
The beverage line I had laying around from when I build my kegerator, it originally came from a kegging equipment supplier, everything else came from Lowes. Unless I'm mistaken, it's 3/16" ID x 7/16" OD Bevlex Series 200 Clear PVC Beer Tubing. Edit: Actually, it may be 1/4" ID x 1/2" OD, I'm not certain to be honest, whatever it is it's fits very snugly in the drain, and in about 4 years of heavy use has never leaked a drop.
It looks like this rubber washer is 0.75" ID I just put a vinyl 0.5 inch hose through it (again) and its outside diameter is ~0.6, and it is loose as a goose. So I'll drag the washer to the store again. It seems Lowes is better than HD when it comes to parts sometimes. What do you do to not crushed the SS hose? I have seen a video on the web where they coiled a thick Cu wire and stuck it into the SS mesh. I look in the 2 stores and see 18 AWG stranded Then see stuff for Hercules to bend. I could just stick a straight piece of Cu pipe or wire right into the SS hose. Ah the fun of playing with SS braid, time to break out the leather gloves. Plus debating 12 or 16 inch length, 20 seems too long for batch. Clueless in NJ
There's your problem right there. Well, there and with your aluminum pot. Wait. Wrong thread. Anyway, hey, I loved my braid - it was the best thing ever - until I maxed out my cooler. Then the braid was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. I vote for jury-rigging a false bottom of some sort because at some point you will max out the cooler and you will hate life.
Why do you think it is a wrong thread? AG is advanced? I think I will stick to a braid for KISS and not fly. I will not max out this cooler... especially for 5 gallons. That is why I did not get a 40 qt mash cooler. Cheers
Nothing. I've maxed out my tun with 30 lbs of grain and have yet to see the hose get crushed. That said, others have had it happen so YMMV.
I think you're in the wrong thread of this thread - I was replying to HB42, silly! I hear you - I loved my braid! What a fantastic invention and so quick, easy and cheap to implement! Fantastic results/filtering, too.
I finally solved it! Put the whole drain back in all parts. Got hi-temp 3/8 inch hose that I struggled for 45 minutes to get through the drain. I did. Got a 3/8 plastic inline value and things are almost done now. Filled the cooler, no leaks. Just missing 3 stainless clamps. HD had SS clamps but did not look to be all SS as stated, plus a clerk agreed. I went to Lowes, and the small size clamps I wanted was empty. I inquired and found out they had been recalled. No other info given. The HD parts were made by Ideal in FL. Not in any rush to get these clamps yet.
