I've been reading about different ways to get hop aroma into beer. I've tried about everything cold side and wanted to explore hopbacking on the hot side. Most sources said that you need a pump to do this unless you have enough head (gravity). Even then, some say, it can be tricky.

Manifold
First things first. Here is the homemade 'manifold' I made using Rob's kettle valve.


I took a drill and drilled a bunch of little holes in the copper tube and clamped off the end. Then I cut a rubber stopped down so it will take the copper pipe and be of short enough profile to all the nut to thread onto the valve housing. I bent the copper pipe wider than the pot so it would actively press against the inside of the pot anchoring itself. I wanted to drill more holes on both side but my bit broke so I called that good.

As far as performance of the valve, it only took one test run to get the gasket set right. I'm very happy with it. Filled with 12 gallons of water, it took 12 minutes to drain. Awesome!



Hopback


I bought a container that was meant for soup. It works well for a hopback because of the 3 side clamps. I drilled a hole in the lid and bottom and set two bungs with the same copper pipe I used for the manifold. Over the bottom bung, I used an upside down vegetable steam to use as a filter/hopstopper.

Plate chiller
First off, ignore the gochujang cans. That's version 1 of a rocket stove that's undergoing modification. The bricks, however, were important. This got me the head required to allow the beer to make it through the hopback and plate chiller.

Brewmageddon


Stats:
Height to bottom of the pot from the floor: 3 ft 10 inches (117 cm)
Water in temp: 16c
Wort in: 85c (I did a 15 minute hopstand)
Wort out: 25c
Total time to cool 10.5-11 gallons of wort: about 15 mins.

I throttled the valve output a bit but it didn't seem to matter much in terms of wort temperature out. I bought one of the smaller chillers available from dudadiesel.com . Anyways, 25c ain't too shabby!

You're probably thinking, "how in the hell did you get the pot up there without killing yourself?". I just took my first runnings and then some of the second and picked it up and put it atop the bricks. I have a valve on the bottom of the mashtun, so when I collected enough what I thought was 'heavy enough' I corked the mashtun and then later collected the remainder in another vessel and then combined them in the 50L pot.

The pale ale I made with the hopback (my first run with the hopback) smells amazing! Hopefully I'll be able to finally get the aroma I've been hoping for.