Stout Tanks - Awesome!

After seeing the bad reviews, on reddit, about Stout I was somewhat nervous ordering from them. I originally tried to order from BruGear, but I got no response to my inquiries. I could not be happier that they didn't respond to me! Stout delivered in my option the best kettle design and conicals and their customer service was fantastic!

What I ordered
20 gallon Electric HERMS
20 gallon MashTun
20 gallon Electric boil
2 7.5 gallons conical fermentors.

What I love about the kettles:

What could use from work:



Fit and Finish
There were some posts that the weld quality was poor. I am admittedly not a welder, but they look very nice to me. They are very smooth and no pitting. And these kettles are polished to a mirror finish, not sure how I'll like trying to keep them that way.


The fermentors are design to fit in to a small fridge and the are perfect so far. One of the few designs that have no weldless fittings and uses butterfly valves. So it's truly sanitary.

The Customer Service

Rich, was very responsive. I originally ordered a 15 gallon setup, but then I changed my mind. I gave them a call and they were happy to switch to a 20 gallon setup. My HLT came with a dent on the bottom (no fault of Stout) looked like Fedex put a pretty good beating on the box. I emailed Stout and they instantly emailed me back and asked me to return the bad HLT and as soon as they received the tracking information they set the replacement to me.

Good to hear some positive feedback about Stout. Maybe they're trying to right their wrongs.

I have to say that the one set of Stout kettles I've seen were very nice looking.

I've ordered a whole set of kettles from Stout Tanks over several years, and 2 conical fermenters as well.

I've never had a major problem. Everything has been what I expected. It's great because everything is tri clamped and there are no weldless fittings on their gear.

The tanks come very shiny, and you have to take a little bit of care to keep them that way. They are a higher grade than most commercial tanks I've seen in that regard, because of the ultra high polishing they do.

I've had a couple of minor problems like missing parts and Stout Tanks took care of the problems right away and sent the missing parts.

The way I see it, is that these tanks from Stout are like commercial brewing tanks in their design and are hand built.

All the other home brew kettles out there seem to be standard stock pots that are punched out on a mass assembly line and have holes punched in them for the valves, etc. and they use threaded/weldless fittings to attach the parts vs. welded tri clamps.

So those are going to be more consistent, but they don't give you the cool features like a tangential inlet, built-in HERMS coil, bottom outlet mash tun, tri clamp element fittings, etc. Velveeta is pretty consistent, too, but I don't eat that any more.

I'd recommend Stout Tanks for sure, based on my experience. They've provided the nicest homebrew equipment I could find and were very easy to work with.

Was your HERMS coil the 3/8" size or is it larger now?

homebrewdude76 said:

Was your HERMS coil the 3/8" size or is it larger now?

Click to expand...

My HERMS is 3/8 and that's the one of the things I'd wish they would change.

How is the mash tun false bottom? Easy to clean? Easy to remove?

So i too was getting ready to make an order from stout for an eherms and figured it would add the useful info on the thread to just tack onto the end...

The only issue i can find with the setup without seeing it in person is how long the output flanges are on the kettles. ie the output right under the thermometer. If using an instumentation T, plus a valve, plus the flange, that has to be like 10" right? From people who have used them, Is it really an issue? What are your thoughts? then you have your element power cable at the 12:00 probably taking up another 5 or so...

Note i was just going to do the 15 BK and MT(skirted), 20Gal HLT

Thanks! hope it's okay to tack onto an old thread