Copper Kettle and/or Tun? Benefits?

[CenturyStanding]

Hey Everyone,

So I know a lot of old fashioned breweries, particularly in Europe, use kettles and tuns made from Copper instead of Stainless Steel. Are there any benefits to this? What are the pros and cons of copper vs. stainless in brewing?

Sorry if this has been covered already, I couldn't find anything informative via the search function.

 

[Catt22]

Copper conducts heat much better than SS and it's a huge difference. The downside is that copper is very expensive these days. IMO, copper would be advantageous for a direct fired MT as it would distribute the heat much more uniformly. You can buy kettles with aluminum clad bottoms for a very similar effect at a much lower cost IIRC, the Megapots have aluminum clad bottoms. Copper was used in the old days mostly because stainless steel had not yet been invented. Iron or plain steel kettles were not used due to the potential for rust/corrosion problems. At least this is my understanding of it.