All my kit has turned up from the states. Paid full duty on one package and partial duty on the other. not complaining overall. Have to say the quality of the kit is outstanding. I managed to get my BCS working over the wireless network today and successfully accessed it via my laptop and tablet. Will do some work on this when i get time.
The 2 inch tri clamps and gaskets arrived with the packages. I ordered two types of gasket, the normal silicone tri clamp gasket with one half already smoothed off and also 3 o rings in case the gaskets didnt work. I tried the gaskets first, to my horror they make the overall mating too thick and the tr-clamps struggle to make it around the whole neck. I then tried the o rings. They worked, however they are tricky to put in place and i actually severed one whist playing around....kack. I decided to give the gaskets another go. I applied a fair bit of pressure to the tri clamp and it eventually fitted. Seemed to seat the gasket very nicely even though the tr-clamp itself does not mate perfectly around the keg neck...time for a wet test.
Here you can see how i attach to keg neck
Here is the broken O ring with the tri clamp in place. (looking down through the top of the keg) You can see the drop in aperture from 2 inches to 0.5 inches. I have spent hours pondering whether to use 2 inch tr-clamp valves to aid cleaning (give me a larger aperture output). The cost would be quite high so i decided for the first build to stick to half inch as this baby is bankrupting me already....i tested it later with grain - see below
Start of wet test - filled with 59 liters of water - not a single drop leaked, excellent. Output from the keg is simply astonishing. with zero dead space left in the bottom.
So I fitted the false bottom to the wet test keg. It fits beautifully (note there is no hole for a dip tube , so it is perfect for my application)
I decided to add some grain, i was really keen to see how much flow would get through the grain and also just how easy this bottom draining 'MT' would be to clean. I added about 6Kg of grain (so not an exact test but would give me an idea). OMG i was not disappointed. The flow through the grain bed was simply astonishing (see the pic below - no thats not a silicone tube its the water pounding from the MT)...I couldnt get enough water back in to the MT (hose pipe on full bore) to keep up with the outflow from the MT through the grain bed. Here is a pic of the output going in to a bucket at full bore - this is going through the grain bed
It also emptied with zero dead space, nada liquid present
I then cleaned the MT by scooping out the grain and then flushing out of the bottom in to a bucket (see pic of my basic test). It took me about 5 mins to thoroughly clean the MT. Any worries i had about only having a half inch aperture for cleaning were unfounded. It was an utter dream to clean. Initial tests have proved very very encouraging, so far, im delighted and now very excited.....
