Crown urn sight guage

[ajmuzza]

Picked up a lot from AHB in my early days of brewing and Im back on the brewing horse after a couple of years abstincne and have elevated my game to Biab. Picked up a used crown 40l on the weekend. The tap has already been replaced with a 1/2" ball valve (happy days) but the sight tube must have broken at some stage as the hole has been blocked off with an m6 thread.

Questions:

1. Would you bother replacing It ie are they useful. If so, presumably with the G&G stainless version?
2. G&G also do sight guage adaptor which appears to allow you to fit a dial thermometer. It appears that a thermometer wouldn't fit above the tap. Has anyone fitted one (pics appreciated).

Cheers

Muz

 

[Tex083]

None of my brewing equipment has a sight gauge. I wnated to get 3 from brew hardware.com as i think the kits are really cool, the plastic tube would be much harder to break http://www.brewhardware.com/wlsightglass/47-tk
I plan to get 3 sent to melbourne without thermometer @ $45 all up it looks a good deal, and they have had good feedback.

 

[ajmuzza]

They look the business but not sure they would work on the existing hole on crown urn.

 

[Truman42]

1. You can buy an original sight gauge for these urns if you prefer. Its personal preference if ou need one or not. A lot of guys just use a ruler marked with notches or just work out how many millimetres 1 litre is on their ruler and do up a table so you know whats in your kettle.

2. In my opinion you dont need a thermometer on your kettle. The only time would be if you let the wort cool overnight and want to transfer the next day once its reached pitching temps. But there is a slight infection risk doing this and probably better to transfer to a cube hot and then let it cool. (The no chill method)
If you run it through a chiller install a thermometer on the chiller outlet instead.
I would also be concerned that the temperature of the wort in the sight glass might not be the same as the wort in the rest of the urn.