Popular 2- and 3-piece ball valves can harbor nasty shit that can ruin your beer, particularly those attached to your brew kettle, just ask Wes! Brewer’s Hardware recently designed the new Quick Clean Take-Apart Ball Valve that makes the cleaning process a cinch. I recently had the opportunity to use one of these suckers and wrote up a thorough review of my experience, check it out!
I have removed ball valves after years of use and not had that much build up. I always clean my kettle and ball valve assembly thoroughly after brewing with a hot (160F) powdered dishwasher detergent-based solution. I never disassemble my ball valve. I just allow the solution to work for 20 minutes with valve closed and 15 minutes with the valve open and a clamped section of tubing attached to the outlet. I then rinse the kettle, fill it with a couple of gallons of hot water, and allow the water to drain through the ball valve. I leave my ball valves in the open position, so that air will flow through the valve while drying. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Not a bad looking setup, thanks for the write up. I do think the Blichmann linear valve has it beat. That’s the easiest valve assembly I’ve seen and used for sure. A few turns counterclockwise and it’s open. A few more turns and it is disassembled. This valve is also on the pricier end, but it doesn’t get much simpler.
By the hammer of Thor, that is a sexy valve. Thanks for sharing before I bought sample cocks for the brewery.
I really wish I’d have sprung for more of these when setting up my system…
No tool disassembly in about 5 seconds. Brilliant.
Edit: I should also note that I have found only one drawback to the linear valve vs the traditional valve. Since it takes a few twists to fully open it also takes a few twists to fully close. It only takes a couple seconds but not as quick as the ball valve lever. Not suitable for a quick shutoff application but good for most brewing purposes.
There are two drawbacks that I saw to those from the get-go compared to the traditional ball valve. The first is the slight difference in time to close/open which you mention. The other is somewhat related in that it looks like it would be more difficult to gauge how open or closed it is. In other words, I can tell pretty exactly when my ball valves are half open or fully open by sight. Those valves aren’t quite as clear. That being said, I think there are some advantages in the new design being simpler especially where cleaning is concerned.
I’m told that brass valves do not have this issue because bacteria don’t like copper.