I had read long ago about making a dip tube for a bottling bucket so as not to need to tilt the bucket to get the last several bottles filled.
I did partial mash BIAB for a while and have moved to all grain by buying an Igloo cooler and using a bottling spigot with my grain bag. But I have to tilt after each sparge.
I talked (chat function) on a supply provider’s site and was directed to this:
In essence the 90* should act as a dip tube. I installed it hand tight and it ran out of steam at the level of the ball valve. Against what I wanted I applied thread sealing tape by doubling it to reduce the width and used wrenches. It still fizzled out.
So I emailed them and got a response I wasn’t figuring on getting, that it wasn’t designed that way and won’t work.
But I’m not buying that as I don’t see why it wouldn’t work in the fashion of any other dip tube. I assumed it wasn’t fully sealed keeping it from sucking down to the orifice. And maybe it still wasn’t.
These are the emails (opposite order):
“This is designed to be a whirlpool arm, not a pickup tube. It will work as a pickup tube as long as there is enough water in the cooler, but it may only drain to the spigot level, and not necessarily the level of the elbow.”
"I bought the WL305 with the 90* elbow as it was supposed to allow wort flow without needing to tip my Igloo cooler mash tun to get the last of the wort. Checking it with water I find it didn’t work, though I hadn’t sealed the threads. Upon using thread sealant (tape such as what was used on the exterior parts) it still is not draining. These fittings are tightened with wrenches.
For this application it is for my mash tun cooler. I was leery of using anything plastic as I don’t know if it would hold up to the heat or leech a plastic taste.
I use a nylon 90° elbow. One end goes into a drilled stopper (not sure which size) and the other end gets a small length of bev tubing angled to the bottom of the bottling bucket. Works great, gets me down to a level of volume that is usually full of sediment anyways and not what I want in my bottles. Just what I was taught to do to get as much as possible out of my bucket
I had made my own bottling buckets and installed the spigot quite low. But these are too small (5 gal bucket for 5-5.75 gal batches). Now I’m tilting to get the last 6 bottles.
Sorry about the bottling bucket hints. Saw it at the beginning of OP and thought that was what we were talking about. I prop my tun at one end with a 2x4 or 2
