My brewing partner and I are planning on moving up to 10 gallon batches soon. We can't afford to just upgrade everything all at once. We were going to split the cost to buy upgrades one piece at a time. The hope is to have a nice set-up within a year or so. We were thinking of going with keggles but I was curious what others thought about there's before we went that route. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
If you BUY a keg to convert it can be pretty pricey. If you decide you would like to get one on deposit and steal it it's a lot cheaper. That's the main con to me personally.
Keggles are nice if you have someone do the work for you/find one on CL. Huge and economical. I use mine for higher gravity beers. They also hold heat pretty well and getting a piece of insulation really helps (BIAB but can be a pain). The bad is that cut is sharp (got myself real good one time) even when well sanded. BIAB can be a pain due to this as well. They are HEAVY, so have a ball valve to drain. I like my Keggle, I don't love it. A pump/counterflow chiller would be a lot nicer, but I got the thing for pennies so I can't complain too much. Just some observations for you.
Someone if offering to put one together for me at cost. He has "legal" access to the kegs so that whole issue is off the table. I'm now just trying to find out how they are from an ease of use standpoint.
With a ball valve to drain from, its not too bad. And the weight can be managed with 2 people pretty well. Just think about the design of your wort chiller for either an immersion or counterflow. They are deep which makes an immersion a little tricky (but my wort chiller is a POS). But you really can't beat the price for a 15 gallon stainless steel brewpot.
I've used them for the past 15 years and love them for 10 and 15 gallon batches. I have false bottoms in the MT and kettle so unless I'm doing a batch with 40 pounds of grain in the MT or more than a pound of hops in the kettle I don't have problems with clogging. You'll need to have ball valves installed, easy to do with a step drill, and after that you can install your thermometers, sight glasses, whatever bells and whistles you want.
I have a 50' immersion chiller that I will be modifying with a whirlpool attachment. The immersion has the connections high up so I should be ok. My only concern is clogging during recirculation. So do I try a false bottom or do some type of hop spider.
I have a bazooka screen, but a hop spider would work as well. False bottoms are $$, so I went cheaper.
