Corny Keg Drawoff Pail

[Toblerone]

I cut the top off of a corny keg and re-purposed a ladle handle to make, what I hope will be, a nice stainless steel draw off pail. I should be able to stick a random lid on it and keep it in the cooler (a commercial fridge) until I get around to bottling.

By the way, my daughter thought I was taking a picture of her!

[Treetapper]

Looks good. Nice job. That will be a family heirloom now!

[Lwood]

I did the same thing a few years ago. For some reason I never even thought about putting a handle on it. Might have to do that.

I put a cone prefilter in it and fold the top down around the outside, hold it in place with a couple of clips. When I get enough, off to the finish pan it goes.

[maple flats]

I use cheapo SS pots. My first 2 were bought from Big Lots in 2004. 1 is 16 qt, the other is 20 qt and both are fairly thin gauge, but they were $15 and $20 respectively and each have lids, they were made in India. My wife found another much heavier gauge one with a glass lid and 24 qt at an estate sale for $25. This year I bought 2 more almost identical at Walmart (22 qt) for 69.99 ea. Unfortunately they are made in China but they are good SS pots. I draw off into these and when I get about 10-15 gal (sooner if it looks like a grade change occures), I heat them to 190, pour into my filter pot, mix filter aid and turn the filter press on. They are then pumped to the canner, ready to be density corrected (I boil to slightly higher density and then correct with distilled water in the canner), graded and canned. I have 5 pots all SS and I use up to 3 turkey frier burners to reheat. I had a large propane tank set at the sugarhouse, connected it to a pipe with a series of valves and fittings to connect the frier burners, each with it's own shutoff. I can no run my canner and 3 friers all at the same time and the propane costs far less than when I used 20# tanks on each unit. I only run the burners with the cupola open for venting, since the friers are 170,000 btu each, 16 x 24 canner? , don't know but fairly high btu.

[maple flats]

When I get an RO next year I might draw off into the filter pot and skip the burners, right now I don't draw off fast enough to do that.