Kettles without Tri-clad for bottom drains?

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BrunDog

BrunDog

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Hi All,

Looking for recommendations for kettles which do not have Tri-Clad bottoms to allow for bottom drains / fittings to be installed. So far I know of Bayou, Concord (and similar), Stout, Brewer's Hardware.

Any others come to mind? Any manufacturers building bottom drain options into their kettles?
 
BrunDog said:
Hi All,

Looking for recommendations for kettles which do not have Tri-Clad bottoms to allow for bottom drains / fittings to be installed. So far I know of Bayou, Concord (and similar), Stout, Brewer's Hardware.

Any others come to mind? Any manufacturers building bottom drain options into their kettles?
Click to expand...

I bought mine from Spike on a sale when they were switching over from V2 to V3 series
Cheers
CBG
 
I have a bottom drain in a 40 gallon concord pot and it works pretty well. It’s a nice pot for a good price
 
I can understand that but I am looking for legit kettles to integrate into my brewery for brewing. I have separate fermentation vessels.

Now, that said let me drag out the soap box... the fact that no manufacturer has come out with legit bottom drain kettles is ridiculous. I know they don’t because of a large chunk folks who brew with gas or induction. But once you go bottom drain, you will wonder why you have been told by the world that side drain is the way you should live your life. Last I checked, gravity flows down. Clean in place is stupid easy, manually or automatically, with bottom drain.

The best kettle would have a slightly conical bottom with a center drain which exits out the front through a skirt welded on to the kettle to lift it up high enough to accommodate the bottom drain hardware. And that hardware would be removable for those looking to flow through the base.

In the meantime I will make my own bottom drain, but let’s go Spike etc!
 
They offer a bottom drain add on. Someone in cbpi Facebook group/homebrewtalk used 3 if them for their electric brewery.
 
BrunDog said:
I have the Bayou’s. They are cheap but get the job done. Anyone have a comparison of the Concords to the Bayous?
Click to expand...
I have bayous and a ballardvale which I was told is from the makers of concord and was a rebranded concord kettle (looked identical). The ballardvale pot I bought on ebay was a very inexpensive 13 gallon kettle. Its certainly thicker and heavier than the bayou but the dimensions are all wrong with brewing since it was wider than it was tall and a poor choice for boil efficiency. I got more boil off and it was not as friendly to do smaller size brews as the taller narrow bayous..

it also leaked from the handle rivets from the get go.
 
golfindia said:
An Upside down keg with a 2" triclamp. Next on My long list of projects.....
Click to expand...
I was going to do this as well for the curved bottom and bottom drain but there are a lot of downsides too like opening up the lid in the top to make it easy to use for things like a mash tun with a full false bottom for optimum efficiency..

I still think about it but I agree with Brundog, I think home brew kettle companies should take it to the next level from adding ports to soup kettles and offer kettles like these for those of us using electric, they already make "Electric ready" kettles with the tc port for the element and probe..

I believe stout and sungood already offer them but they are pricey...
Here ya go,
http://www.sungoodmachinery.com/products/kettle-with-whirlpool-ID482.html

I am very happy with my 3bbl system from sungood so far BTW and recommend them, they have a customs agent they recommended that we used in the states JAS which was also helpful in answering our questions.
 
BrunDog said:
Hi All,

Looking for recommendations for kettles which do not have Tri-Clad bottoms to allow for bottom drains / fittings to be installed. So far I know of Bayou, Concord (and similar), Stout, Brewer's Hardware.

Any others come to mind? Any manufacturers building bottom drain options into their kettles?
Click to expand...

Stout tanks has the option to put bottom drains on their tanks. I had it done on mine.
 
November said:
Stout tanks has the option to put bottom drains on their tanks. I had it done on mine.
Click to expand...
I believe its identical to the bottom drain kettle I linked above.. Sungoods manufacturer also makes them for stout if im not mistaken. The drain is on the side but it runs to the middle then theres a 90 degree bend up and you can see its below the weld ring for the bottom in that picture..
 
BrunDog said:
Hi All,

Looking for recommendations for kettles which do not have Tri-Clad bottoms to allow for bottom drains / fittings to be installed. So far I know of Bayou, Concord (and similar), Stout, Brewer's Hardware.

Any others come to mind? Any manufacturers building bottom drain options into their kettles?
Click to expand...

Does anyone know if the Blichmann v2 kettles are Tri-clad? I was looking at putting in bottom drains and was curious, but can’t seem to find anything stating they are.
 
BrunDog said:
I have the Bayou’s. They are cheap but get the job done. Anyone have a comparison of the Concords to the Bayous?
Click to expand...
I have both... concords are thicker and made of a different grade of stainless... dimensions of the kettles usually leave a lit to be desired though.. some are wider than they are tall.

Edit sorry.. just saw this is a revived necrothread
 
Brundog, what route did you end up taking? I have Concords with bottom drains and as I'm looking to upgrade, like you said, I can't go back. I had not realized that bottom drains are not common...
 
The insulated mash tuns from SsBrewtech have a conical bottom with bottom drain.
You can’t fire them but this post is in the electric brewing forum.
 
I wonder if it's possible to make a hole in the center of the bottom and then pull fitting through it that will be soldered later in such manner that it would bend the thin walled kettle bottom slightly. Sort of DIY to get sloped bottom and bottom drain at once. What do you think?
 
mtweeman said:
I wonder if it's possible to make a hole in the center of the bottom and then pull fitting through it that will be soldered later in such manner that it would bend the thin walled kettle bottom slightly. Sort of DIY to get sloped bottom and bottom drain at once. What do you think?
Click to expand...

This sounds possible. In the old days, people did pull through with couplings to make sure there was no protrusion up into the kettle. Bobby sells pull-through purposed fittings, but they leave a protrusion.

I soldered threaded couplings to the bottom of my kettles. I have also used the flat-faced solder on flange, but with the clamp it requires a big hole in the table. Mounting the kettle on legs would help in that case. Again, need a quality commercial solution.. SS and Stout are the choices as of now.
 
BrunDog said:
This sounds possible. In the old days, people did pull through with couplings to make sure there was no protrusion up into the kettle. Bobby sells pull-through purposed fittings, but they leave a protrusion.
Click to expand...
Exactly. Of course protrusion can be done outside the kettle. See Joe Fisher here:

By the way, do you have any data how many degrees are preferable in sloped bottoms? I wonder if using pull-through fitting would be enough to provide expected functionality.

BrunDog said:
I soldered threaded couplings to the bottom of my kettles. I have also used the flat-faced solder on flange, but with the clamp it requires a big hole in the table. Mounting the kettle on legs would help in that case. Again, need a quality commercial solution.. SS and Stout are the choices as of now.
Click to expand...
I have more or less the same solution as you have - hole on the side of the kettle, but everything's screwed. I need to tip kettle slightly to be able to get all liquid out, but it works pretty well. Tri-clamp is not a problem for me as I use extruded aluminium profiles for brew stand. Some not up-to-date build photo made a year ago or so.
IMG_20190119_213229 - Copy.jpg
 
Since I started TIG welding Ive bottom drained many kettles and barrels but I have yet to sacrifice a triclad kettle to see if it is possible. Its so weird that every kettle distributor came out with premium triclad units well after the industry hard shifted to electric.
 
Bobby_M said:
Its so weird that every kettle distributor came out with premium triclad units well after the industry hard shifted to electric.
Click to expand...
I think the reason for this is most are using repurposed soup/sauce kettles with the fittings added to keep costs down. If only the bottom drain stout kettles where a bit cheaper... I think they would be much more popular here. people dont think twice about spending hundreds more on a fancy tiny unitank they can cip instead of just reaching in an wiping out but something like this which would benefit them more is just not popular... (Which I find weird)

This is the cheapest option I could find through local resellers besides stout, but if ordered directly from Gavin at Sungood it should still be at least 1/3 cheaper per kettle with shipping and customs maybe more.. (all 3 of my 3bbl kettles from sungood including mash tun came to less than what just the BK and HLT would have cost me indirectly elsewhere.) for some reason stout doesnt currently offer the 15gallon with the sight glass?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/15-Gallon-...365376?hash=item3f86bb5c00:g:EsYAAOSwgKpZtugR

https://www.ebay.com/itm/15-Gallon-...889041?hash=item3f5bc9c351:g:YT8AAOSw--1WsSNK
 
Last edited:
Bobby_M said:
Since I started TIG welding Ive bottom drained many kettles and barrels but I have yet to sacrifice a triclad kettle to see if it is possible. Its so weird that every kettle distributor came out with premium triclad units well after the industry hard shifted to electric.
Click to expand...
What's your opinion about written above, i.e. post #25? I don't have much experience in soldering/welding, so it would be good to hear about this from someone who has.
 
I wonder what drilling through the tri-clad would do. If you weld you would need to weld both to the bottom and top and that could cause some heat stress and de-lamination of the layers.

Soldering might bond the layers but I also wonder what the heating would do - much lower local temp but more global heat added. I guess we wouldn’t know until someone does a few.

Regarding Bobby’s comment... I think the industry is still ~2/3 propane, at least according to John Blichmann. Ironically his kettles aren’t tri-clad, but he doesn’t see the value in bottom drains.

I guarantee someone will create a HB scale kettle with a bottom drain, then be like “look what a great idea we are bringing to market!”
 
mtweeman said:
What's your opinion about written above, i.e. post #25? I don't have much experience in soldering/welding, so it would be good to hear about this from someone who has.
Click to expand...

Any DIY method of doming the bottom of a thin kettle would like just rip the welds apart. I'm more keen on offsetting the bottom drain to near the sidewall and just build a .5 degree slope into your stand leaning towards the drain.
 
BrunDog said:
I wonder what drilling through the tri-clad would do. If you weld you would need to weld both to the bottom and top and that could cause some heat stress and de-lamination of the layers.

Soldering might bond the layers but I also wonder what the heating would do - much lower local temp but more global heat added. I guess we wouldn’t know until someone does a few.

Regarding Bobby’s comment... I think the industry is still ~2/3 propane, at least according to John Blichmann. Ironically his kettles aren’t tri-clad, but he doesn’t see the value in bottom drains.

I guarantee someone will create a HB scale kettle with a bottom drain, then be like “look what a great idea we are bringing to market!”
Click to expand...

In fairness, and I totally respect John, Blichmann conicals still use weldless fittings which IMHO takes them completely out of the running in that space. The kettles also don't sell for similar reasons but I can bottom drain the crap out of them with welded TC ferrules. Too bad they are already hole punched.

I've gotta get my hands on a cheap thrift store triclad kettle and I'll try it. I think the aluminum core would pull a lot of heat so the overall part may not get too gorked (or it might pop apart and throw molten stainless at me)
 
This thread is near and dear to my heart, as I've been mashing on a bottom-draining inverted keggle thanks to Bobby for I think 5 years now, and have been making tweaks along the way and always have this residual dream of the perfect Platonic-form mash tun for homebrewers.


One thing I did notice thanks to FB advertising is Spike's Nano system uses bottom-drain, conical-ish bottomed kettles. Not sure if they'd be interested in making / selling similar kettles independent of the Nano (and if they did, judging by the price of the Nano, they'd be $$$$). Other than that tiny nugget of information, I'm responding to keep this thread on my watch list :)
 
Yes, BK can and should be near the edge but the MLT needs the exit to be in the middle. I find the slight sag in the middle of my cheap Bayou kettles helps but a legit slight cone shape would be fabulous for cleaning.
 
My dream BK has both a slight cone and center drain just for cleaning and a separate side pick-up port.
 
VinceBrews said:
My dream BK has both a slight cone and center drain just for cleaning and a separate side pick-up port.
Click to expand...
This. All of this. I'm looking for new kettles. I've used an all electric system with an upside down keg for my mash tun for years, and it makes clean up so easy. But now I do half barrel batches, and am considering full barrel. All I want is something with a slight cone bottom, and a center drain for cleanup. I'm tired of turning kettles upside down to clean and rinse. The only thing that fits the bill is Stouts' 20 gallon kettles on legs, but dang they're pricey compared to other kettles. Even their 1 bbl kettles don't have it. No one wants to be flipping those over to drain.
 

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