Fermentor Side Tap
Here's my idea for tapping the side of the fermentor. I decided against trying to tap the cone because I thought it would be more difficult from a couple of different perspectives: 1) The elbow would need to be V shaped (120º) which is not a readily available bend; the elbow used here is a standard 45º fitting. 2) We get a flatter area to drill into on the side than on the cone because the cone's smaller.
What we will need to do is drill is 3/4" hole in the side of the fermentor. So far, I haven't had much luck locating a drill bit of this size. We'll probably have to get it from a specialty place or bring the fermentor to a machine shop.
I tried to accomplish the same idea with a smaller hole (1/2") but had problems finding the right sized Drain (#4 below). I actually found one with a 1/2" O.D. by 3/8" I.D., but the inside threads don't go all the way through to the bolt side. In addition, the smaller drain is only 1/2" wide (the thread area) as opposed the 3/4" on the larger drain. If we have to bring the fermentor to a machine shop, we might be able to have them tap the inside of the smaller drain and then we could go with the smaller drain. The modifications below to do that would be to replace #1/2/3 with 3/8" fittings, and get rid of the bushing (#9).