Right, this idea is not intended to be useful for anything other than a stopgap situation. I made mine because I had a brew planned and all my hops were suddenly only available in pellets. I use a standard looking drilled copper pipe filter in my copper – a Brupaks style gadget attached to my tap with tubing. It would have struggled to have handled all those Challenger, Mount Hood and Willamette pellets from Down Under.
I’m soon to have a new boiler and when I do I will ask a friend to help make a proper Hop Stopper, but if you get caught short – steal a 10″ stainless steel sieve from the kitchen or ironmongers, bend up the expensive looking handle at a right angle and squish on a flat surface until you have made the sieve sit square. Get a Dremel (or kitchen scissors, razor blades, welding torches, hangnails…) and cut a small hole with side slices, so you can shove a standard squished 12mm copper pipe hop filter through it.
Anyway, you can get the idea and the sieve is still usable.
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- What can I say – You need a copper pipe hop filter. Then it’s about getting hold of a great stainless sieve and cutting a hole in it
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- Err, same picture i think.
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- Right, I got this one for around a tenner in 11″ size and it sits really square to a surface. Squish in the new hole.
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- See – it looks convincing, and the little handle is fine where it is and not worth cutting off
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- Adjust the tubing length and steps and angle of the copper elbows to ensure the sieve sits flat on the base
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- Job’s a good ‘un
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- …
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- Stands up well to mash run off – looks the part too, reassuringly
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- I’ve never seen pellets after the boil, so this was all new to me
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- Hops just sat over the sieve
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- Obviously another sieve is still handy at the tap end!
