Hello from Cumbria

critchl

Hi to all. I have just joined the forum and am looking forward to "fermenting" ideas with savvy brewers. I have been brewing on and off for a while, with varying degrees of success, but now intend to put more effort into it.
One area I have agonised over is taking a sample for s.g. testing. There are wine thieves, pipettes, syphons or just float hydrometer in fv. What about fitting a tap to fv; would that be ok?

HBO_Staff

Welcome critchl, the main thing with taking a sample of brew is trying to ensure you don't contaminate it, as long as everything you use is well cleaned and sanitised it should be fine, a tap can be a very handy way of drawing a little brew off into a trial jar and taking a reading with very little disturbance to the brew, so brewing in a vessel with a tap fitted can be good option. Alternatively you could use a wine thief etc to remove a little brew for testing

critchl

Thanks. I think I will fit a tap.
Now - is it best to bit it in the middle just for sampling without the risk of disturbing sediment, or low down so that it could also be used to fill a barrel etc?

HBO_Staff

There will be no reason why you could not fit a tap higher up, but we think usually taps are fitted near to the base - just not too close or the backnut wont go on. We supply the vessels drilled ready to fit the tap, and our taps usually have a sediment trap on the back which stops sediment being drawn in when bottling/using the tap. The advantage of fitting quite low down is that you can use with a bottling stick to fill bottles etc, it is quite a steady flow so drawing sediment through is not usually an issue:

http://www.home-brew-online.com/equipment-c40/home-brew-online-fermenting-vessel-25-ltr-including-little-bottler-lid-with-grommet-p809