Lately my house has felt really small, maybe because I have spent so much time there lately with the new shift work shit in effect. Anyway, it feels like a little fort. A fort where I stay, I look out the front door, and then walk the 50 feet or whatever to my back door and look out the back. It is starting to feel like just exactly what it is... 4 exterior walls covered by brick. That is what is supposed to make people feel all awesome because they own a house? I just don't get it. I need trees and stuff like that. I need to look out my windows and doors and see nothingness, just empty space. It has become my goal to make this happen, and I think I am setting things up pretty well to make that happen. My credit card debt is almost gone, and I have a fuck ton of equity built up as well. I would say in 6 months, I won't owe anyone anything, except for house debt, which is equity so it doesn't count, and my truck, which doesn't count because I will either always have a payment on vehicles, or I can just get something cheaper. It should be an awesome time. I will upgrade from a fort to a fortress. I have no idea where such a thing will be, but I suspect it will be duper cool.

For some reason, I stopped production on the brutus 10 clone. Not sure why, so I started up again. In my last post, I had just finished up the pump mount and housing. I decided to start on finishing up the kegs. I sort of decided to call my polishing job complete, even though the things are not mirror-like. On the mash tun, I will be covering it with insulating foam, so it does not need to be all shiny and pretty. I had the boil kettle polished to my liking more or less, and I decided to leave the hot liquor tank a little less than perfect, because A. it was really difficult to get it that way, and B. I wanted each of the three kegs to have a different look to them since they serve three different functions.

All 3 kegs need a ball valve, a sight glass, and a thermometer. The ball valve allows me to drain the kegs. A sight glass I can mark with increments so I know how much liquid is in them, and the thermometer is important so that I know the temperature of the liquid inside. It is debatable whether or not you really need a thermometer in the boil kettle because water boils at 212 degrees, and it will never get any hotter than that. I look at it as a continuity function, and just in case I ever want to use the brew kettle as anything else, now I can. So in order to install these items you need a bit that it capable of drilling through stainless steel. I went with a step bit. These are heavy duty drill bits that are beveled so that you can drill a variety of hole sizes. They look like this:



So basically you just drill the correct size hole that you need for the various parts. I needed a large hole for my ball valve and a small hole for my sight glass/thermometer combo. Here is a picture of the parts that need to be installed, and a picture of one of the holes I drilled to make this happen, to give you an idea of how the parts go together. Also I included a picture of the final product after the parts are installed.











You will also notice I installed an eye bolt through the upper lip of the keg. This was not my idea, it is pretty much the accepted standard for keeping your sight glass in place.



Anyhoo, it is coming along nicely, hopefully I will be cranking out mass amounts of beer soon.