Spike Brewing Kettles

As promised, I wanted to report my experience with my Spike Brewing kettle. I got the 15 gallon w/ 1 welded port (SS ball valve). It arrived late last week and I finally got around to brewing with it after work today. My boil is currently about 35 minutes in and so far everything has worked just fine.

The weld seems strong on the port. I attached the valve and nipple with teflon on the threads, no leaks so far. I'm doing a 5.5 gallon batch on the stove-top and it's producing a way more even boil than my old 8 gallon canning pot ever did. I'm able to stir the wort without losing a boil momentarily.

Overall I'm very happy with the pot. There's not really much else I can say. It works as advertised and as far as I can tell you can't beat the price for a SS welded pot.

:rockin:


Edit - 2 more things. The handle on the lid gets pretty hot, so watch that. Also, the boil off amount seems to be way better (less) than my previous pot. My 8 gallon canning pot would boil off 1.5 gallons easy, even with a pretty mild boil. This has boiled off about .75 gallons in 50 total minutes so far of a good boil.

Love seeing the kettles in action :rockin::rockin:

I also will give a shoutout to their kettles.
Just finished my first brewday with the new kettle.
I agree completely with the OP, the boil off rate is spot on at about .8 p/h. The welds, temp gauge and spout all of great quality, especially considering the price! I can't find anything wrong with the quality of the kettle.
Only thing is the handles get hotter than the megapot I have.
Other than that, a great kettle on it's own that holds up to all comers.

I've been eyeing these kettles as well. I've been trying to decide between these and the "+" series with the Tri-Clamp fittings. They look really nice with the ability to remove the valves and thermometer in seconds.

I'd only grab the tric-clamp if you plan on going all-out. It'll get expensive fast. The plus is that you can fully disassemble and clean everything after every brew. It's not just that you can remove the valve/thermometer in seconds it's that you can remove them and clean all the surfaces very easily.

With NPT you can get quick disconnects or camlocks if you just want to unhook hoses or valves quickly. But you'll have to break those down by unscrewing them and re-assemble with pipe tape to clean inside the threads. I went with NPT everything and camlocks. Every 4-6 months i uncrew everything and give it a good cleaning. I don't notice too much build up, mostly just beer stone build up on the hotside (brew kettle fittings), the mash tun and hlt never have much of anything built up.

postalbunny said:

I'd only grab the tric-clamp if you plan on going all-out. It'll get expensive fast. The plus is that you can fully disassemble and clean everything after every brew. It's not just that you can remove the valve/thermometer in seconds it's that you can remove them and clean all the surfaces very easily.

With NPT you can get quick disconnects or camlocks if you just want to unhook hoses or valves quickly. But you'll have to break those down by unscrewing them and re-assemble with pipe tape to clean inside the threads. I went with NPT everything and camlocks. Every 4-6 months i uncrew everything and give it a good cleaning. I don't notice too much build up, mostly just beer stone build up on the hotside (brew kettle fittings), the mash tun and hlt never have much of anything built up.

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Hmmm. I've never removed the NPT fittings on my HERMS setup since I started with it 3-4 years ago. Maybe, I should check them!

The Tri-Clamps are just so cool though!!!