In the Graham Wheeler book Camra's Brew Your Own British Ale, he suggests getting a 30 litre Burco tea earn. I figured that even if I do eventually get a Braumiester or similar I will still need a HLT. So I decided that this would not be wasted as a long term purchase. I picked up one of Amazon and someone had helpfully reviewed this as a brewing boiler which helped me decide what to get.
The Burco Cygnet came with a black tap and brass back nut. The odd thing about this was the hole the back of the tap passed through was for a 3/4" BSP nipple, but was not circular, but was oblong. Most stainless steel fittings from home brew suppliers is 1/2"BSP, so we were alone on this one with with various pipe supplier catalogs.
As most of the brewing world has settled on 1/2"BSP, we decided not to go with a 3/4"BSP Ball Valve. We used a Dremel with a grinder attachment to bur out the hole to accept a 3/4" BSP Nipple
The parts list was a bit of trial and error and I ended up with a few parts that I haven't used. We also purchased a sight glass which required a new hole to be drilled.
Below is an illustration of the ball valve setup. Its not pretty, but with some PTFE (teflon) tape it is sound. Actually this point is very important. When using a nipple to go through the side of the boiler, use 5 x turns of PTFE along the entire thread before starting the installation. I also find that adding food grade silicone to the outside of the PTFE helps.
Filling up to check the seals.
Checking out the ball valv
Just because I am a curious type, I took the base off to see what the element looks like and hey its circular.
As most of the brewing world has settled on 1/2"BSP, we decided not to go with a 3/4"BSP Ball Valve. We used a Dremel with a grinder attachment to bur out the hole to accept a 3/4" BSP Nipple
The parts list was a bit of trial and error and I ended up with a few parts that I haven't used. We also purchased a sight glass which required a new hole to be drilled.
Below is an illustration of the ball valve setup. Its not pretty, but with some PTFE (teflon) tape it is sound. Actually this point is very important. When using a nipple to go through the side of the boiler, use 5 x turns of PTFE along the entire thread before starting the installation. I also find that adding food grade silicone to the outside of the PTFE helps.
Hi, thank you so much for sharing your setup. I was giving up to install a 1/2 bsp valve on the cygnet boiler because I always had minor leak... Does your ball valve have leak? I would be very happy if you can share an image of the tool used to bur out the hole.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much in advance for your attention.
Antonello
Hi Antonio, thank you for your message. Its the first question I have received via this blog which is nice. Seeing as you are interested in this, today I will add more information to this page about what we have done to get these right, but for now here is some more info. It is very water tight and also there was a bit of trial and error so I did end up buying some parts that I didn't need. The tool that we used to burr our the hole was a Dremel Rotary tool. They are for sale on Amazon. The Dremel is amazingly useful for all sorts of things. We anticipated we may have needed something more heavy duty but as it turned out the Burco isn't really that thick and can be fairly easily drilled and cut. With the Dremel there are few attachments that we have used and over the years the Dremel is a very useful tool to have to hand. Burring out the hole, I can't actually recall if we used the circular sanding disk or a grind stone. But we did get both as standard with the kit we bought. We needed some ear plugs and we put a towel into it try to keep the noise down. It didn't take long at all. We also have a box of extra attachments that can be purchased quite cheaply - I think we may have bought this from Maplin years ago, something like £10 for 50 attachments. Anyhow I have also used the circular sanding disk to create a bevel in the stainless steel nut on the inside of my mash tun which helped the silicone washer stay in place as until I did this, the silicone washer kept popping out one side. This wasn't necessary with the Burco as unlike with the mash-tun ball valve connection, I was able to hold the inside nut still and hand turn the nipple and coupler from the outside to tighten. As the o-ring doesn't move it less likely to become deformed. It would be more ideal to have a 3/4bsp stainless steel washer on the inside between the nut and the o-ring. I managed to track one down - it seems there are lots of 1/2bsp stainless steel but much less 3/4bsp - anyhow have not yet needed it and may add it next time I dismantle it for cleaning. Another use for this has been to use a cutting disk to make modifications to the mash tun's copper manifold and also to cut holes in sandwich boxes to house STC1000 temperature controls for our cheap fridges. I guess the thing that got it all to work really is the 3/4" high temp silicone o-ring which I could not find for love or money. I ended up buying a bag of 50 of them and these are actually not imperial but metric. If you have trouble finding these I'd be happy to put a few in the post. I'll never run out of the ones I have. Also I think a big part of getting it not to leak was to used loads of PTFE tape. I bought 20 reels very cheaply as this will be needed each time it is all dismantled for cleaning. I also bough a pot of food grade silicone. All in all its difficult to say which did more It seems the. Anyhow all in all very happy with the Burco in general. Anyhow I'll take more pictures and put more explanation in the above post later today.
DeleteThank you so much for all this info. You're very kind.
DeleteIn the next few weeks I will try my revenge on the burco boiler. I will let you know if a will manage to have a no leak ball valve xD.
I will try also with the 5 turns of PTFE tape as you suggests, and for sure I didn't think about of the food grade silicon grease.
Thanks again.
I owe you a beer at least xD.
How did you get on?
DeleteI have just dismantled the ball valve and fittings for cleaning. It seems that the secret to no leaks with this setup is to use 5 turns of PTFE tape around the entire length of the nipple and to use food grade silicone grease to ensure no liquid can travel along the thread once its screwed in.
ReplyDeleteI'll update this page with a list of parts.
I live in West Sussex and was wondering where you sourced the parts for this build?
ReplyDeleteHi, The Burco boiler I purchased from Amazon. The Stainless Ball Valve including various parts from bes.co.uk - who are great but one annoyance is that their catalogue only shows drawings of their kit instead of photos. I got a pot of food grade silicon grease from them also which will last a long time. One part that was a little difficult to source is 3/4" Silicone O-Rings. For the boiler tap I use the one that came with the Burco which is 3/4" - not sure if it is silicon but is tough and shows no signs of wear. I did buy a bag of metric equivillent o-rings but they are not as tight as the burco one. I have successfully used them on other taps and fittings but care is needed to make sure it is sitting correctly. If you find yourself needing some of these, I'm happy to post you a few as I've got about 100 as I had to buy a bag of them to get the few that I needed. I would also add that you might want to check out http://www.angelhomebrew.co.uk/en/ - they do punches for sheet steel and other goodies. Also check out https://www.brewbuilder.co.uk/ . You'll get a long way with these sites.
ReplyDeleteJust about all home brewers will tell you that home brewed beer is just as delicious if not better than store-bought beer. This is because the stuff you make at home is much fresher than anything you'll find on a liquor store shelf visit it.
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ReplyDeletehey, thanks for sharing this info as an experienced service engineer in one of the best Combi boiler company most of the people don't know how to use this the way your explaining is good keep going
ReplyDelete