Excuse the slow reply Timos but replying to people who put holes in their kettles distresses me a bit . LOL.

Seriously though, nice job mate! And a super clear pic!

I see you have a two piece ball-valve there. These can be hard to break apart and clean in the first instance. I would recommend doing this after your first brew as the longer you leave it, the harder it gets. (I remember breaking a mate of mines apart and I had to put two spanners on it - one spanner wedged in my bull bar and the other with me slamming a small sledge hammer on it.)

One question I have never come up with a decent answer to until maybe now is, "How often should I pull apart and clean my kettle ball-valve?"

Pulling it apart on every brew is a PITA. Leaving it too long is going to cost you at least one brew (probably a lot more as you'll blame everything else first ).

I think the answer might be to...

A day or two before you are going to brew next, attach a clean hose to your kettle tap and put the other end up your nostril. Open and close the tap whilst breathing in. The nose is pretty good at picking up off-flavours.

If it smells "clean" brew on. If it smells strange, pull it apart and clean it before you brew. (I have done this with a few of my mate's ball-valves and they have all had a nasty surprise when we have opened them up.)

I've been pulling mine apart after every brew because I know of several nightmare stories about kettle taps. I think now, while I am waiting for Wizard's auto-syphon, I will do the above.

Thanks again for the pic Timos. It is the shiniest one so far on BIABrewer.

No more drilling mate!


PP

I also like the sound of SS's method. It would be well worth doing this after you have finished your brew and cleaned your kettle as well. In other words put some water in it, bring it to the boil and run it through opening and closing the tap a lot.

One thing I never realised with ball-valves until a mate (Doogiechap) pointed it out to me, is that ball-valves actually retain a lot of liquid. The "ball" is surrounded by some square bits that retain a lot of liquid that is very hard to "move" and can therefore easily become stagnant. Have a look at the pic here. Can you see the bits where wort etc can become trapped? Raising the outside bits of the tap to boiling point is harder than we would expect unfortunately.

So, make sure you open and close the ball-valve a lot. Definitely try and run some cleaner/sanitiser or boiling water through it after each brew with a fair bit of opening and closing.


PP