New Brew Kettle Step 1

Okay, this is for everyone that ever did anything with the thought "this is going to go great because I am going to do it right!" and after a few beers and a little impatience looked at what he created and said "it'll work."

This is my first few steps on creating my brew kettle, if you looked at the previous post on my search for a new brew kettle and saw the link to this cool "how to" on turning a keg into a kettle, you would see that the steps seem easy. Drill three holes, cut the top off, drill another hole and you are done. Well this is my side of the story:

First off I thought I could get away without buying the step drill bit because those things are expensive and I ended up making some funky cuts in the top of the keg and getting no where.

So I went ahead and bought the step drill bit ($27), but things could be worse because it does seem pretty useful.

Once I had this new bit I could drill the three holes in the top of the keg and start to cut the top of the keg off. However, cutting between two holes cost me three blades. Now I had this coming because I am a very tight individual and I decided to go bargain on the blades. But nonetheless, there is a lesson, kegs are TOUGH stuff, be prepared if you are going to try and do this kid of cutting.

Now after two nights of going at this thing in my PJ's (because I am a strange person) in my basement with my wife and dog both hating me, I made it though!

I am going to do somethings this weekend to get this into better shape, but in the end, I made good progress on a project that is much harder than I would have EVER anticipated. The next steps are going to be to drill the holes for the ball valve and for the thermometer and to grind down the edges on the cut off top and the holes.

I am happy where this is going because this is one hell of a brew kettle and its going to be rough, but it's going to be capable of easily brewing 10 gallon batches when all is said and done.

More to come...


Cheers.