Kettle Mod - hopblocker

I had a great 8g pot, but no valve and found siphoning with the plate chiller awkward (and that's the nice way of phrasing it...in use, siphoning to the chiller involved obscenities...)

I bought a hopblocker from the finest, most friendly homebrew shop in Indiana, Kennywood, in Crown Point, and contacted the folks at Bargain Fittings to fab the fittings for the pot.

I didn't really know what I needed, but they took great care of me via an email exchange and fabbed an all stainless ball valve and related fittings to modify the pot for the hopblocker.

I used a step bit and really didn't have any trouble at all drilling the pot...kept it cool with a soaking wet paper towel.

Figuring that baby bottle nipples must be food safe and have to stand up to, at least, boiling temperatures, I cut the nipple part off, kept the "flat" part that goes into the bottle and had three food safe, high temp gaskets for less than a buck.

Works perfectly