Since we are running out of my previous batch of Honey Porter, I started brewing a batch of beer today. If you remember last time, the Big Hose showed me no happy bubbles at all. I figured that all that gas was just leaking out of the seams around the bucket and not going out the hose. So there was little point in putting all that hosing together. The beer came out OK anyway, so instead of using all of that hose, I made a new kind of airlock that is just a Big Hole in the top that the gas can leak out of.
Some commercial beer is brewed in open vats with no top at all, or with a piece of cloth across the top to keep out the critters and the dust. So my new airlock, which is little more than a Big Hole, should work OK. Here are the parts that I started with.
Those plastic parts are electrical conduit parts. The pipe is an offset pipe with a kink in it. It is used to connect two sections of conduit together that were not properly aligned (probably invented for my electrician… just sayin’), so it has a bend in it. It isn’t a very big bend; it’s just a little kinky.
Anyway, it ought to work as a Big Hole, so who cares if it’s kinky?
The pipe goes into a piece that goes on the outside of the lid. I sealed the thread of the outside piece with a rubber O ring. I don’t want any gas leaking out around my big gas-leaking hole. Hmmmm.
OK. I’m not sure where that’s going.
But just to complete the foolish consistency, I pushed the threads through the hole in the lid and sealed them with an O ring on the inside too. So there!
The inside plastic piece is the same one that held on the hose barb the last time I attempted to invent something.
Now, on the outside, I have a piece with no threads in it instead of the hose barb.
The pipe just fits inside of the hole with a friction fit, so I jam it in there.
Finally, to keep the dust and bugs out, I grabbed a cheap, plastic, disposable beer cup (it seemed appropriate).
I turned the cup over onto the pipe, and we are good to go.
It looks stupid, but it ought to work. You can see that I put my stainless steel bolt back into the small airlock hole too. We can’t have any leaks around that Big Hole.
The brewing went fine, and after I pitched the yeast and stuffed the bucket into the closet, here is what we have.
It looks a bit strange without Dad’s Beer Bucket, but hey, ya gotta move on, know what I mean?