4 Vessel Brew Stand

Last year I started my build of a weldless brew stand. A number of batches and changes later it is very usable, but not finished. It does work very well and lends itself to design and process changes due to the construction type. The erector set model is flexible, strong and a cool conversation piece.

The Kettle and HLT have burners and are on the ‘hot’ side of the stand. I added a divider to help keep the heat off of the cool side shelf. This was an afterthought, but the construction type easily allows for it.


I have water plumbed into the stand. I have a carbon filter mounted with the ability to bypass it once the brew water has been filtered. There is a hose bib on the back of the stand and a camlock on the front.


I use two Hurricane burners with natural gas valves. I have a union on the stand that connects to the gas hose that I connect to the stub in my backyard. These burners are great and are plenty hot. I don’t think I am getting their full potential out of them due to my stub location being as far from the meter as possible, but it is enough. I added a windscreen to the kettle burner, but haven’t done the HLT burner yet. The windscreen is just some sheet metal I picked up at Home Depot/Lowes, cut to length and a couple holes drilled into them and bolted in place. Works well.


I am using two Little Giant pumps for moving liquids around and have camlocks and silicon hoses throughout. I went with the street elbows on all of the hoses and just threaded the hose onto the elbow and added a zip tie for a little security. I do have one hose that I added hose clamps to and use it for the input to the CFC due to the pressure increase due to the flow restriction through it.

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The kettle is at least 15 years old and is the only welded vessel. Nothing special about it, ½” coupler, copper pickup tube. The other vessels are all silver soldered. On all of these I have sight glass and thermowell ports.


The HLT has water in and out and ports for a HERMs coil that is coming soon.


On the MLT I have an inlet port at the top for sparge/recirc. It has a street elbow and a hose barb on the inside and a length of silicon hose. I have a bottom port for draining out and am currently using the false bottom that came with my cooler MLT that I got from More Beer a few years ago. I have it wrapped with reflectix and a disc of refelctix on the bottom and lid. I also have been setting the lid from my cooler on top, it fits perfectly down in the extra bit of height that the reflectix has above the keg.


The whirlpool vessel has two side ports and a bottom drain. The in port has a street elbow and hose barb. The out port has a street elbow only. The bottom drain is used for cleaning primarily. I have been only moving wort through the side ports at this point. Also, need to replace the brass valves on this.


The reason for 4 vessels is so I can double batch easier and that’s just what I wanted to have. The whirlpool does let me get the wort out of the hot kettle and I could cool it much faster without all that latent heat from the hot metal. I have adjusted my brewing to just using 2 hop additions: First wort hops and whirlpool hops. After the boil I pump the wort over to the whirlpool through the CFC with no cooling. I add the whirlpool hops to this and let it steep for about 20 minutes. I then recirculate through the CFC back into the whirlpool to get down to pitching temp and then I remove the CFC and pump for 5 minutes or so to get a real nice whirlpool. I have to do this due to the CFC restricting the flow to much to get a proper whirlpool. I let it settle for 10-15 minutes and then pump it into the sanke fermenter. Move it to the fermentation chamber, pitch the yeast and aerate.

I have used threads here as guides to build just about all of the pieces on my stand. This place has been a great source of information and inspiration. I thank everyone for their contributions that have helped me make damn good beer and have a cool system to do it on.

Next step is to get the HERMs coil installed. I have attempted it with copper unions and those leaked. I also tried using compression elbows and those leaked. I think reusing my old immersion chiller was the problem with the compression fittings, it was not as straight as I would have liked. I will probably solder on elbows and a short straight piece of copper and try the compression fittings again.

On Monday's brew I was able to hold my mash temp the entire time without HERMs, but the recirculation did result in a temp drop. 35lbs of grain was my biggest mash so far and it fit easily.

Looks great. I've considered adding a 4th vessel to my rig for double batches, but it takes up too much space as it is. FWIW I used compression elbows for my HEX coil and they had some small leaks at first also from the copper being slightly out of round and slightly undersized. I just wrapped a few layers of teflon tape around the pipe where the compression nut fits and it worked fine. Not the most elegant solution, but my ghetto HERMS isn't exactly elegant anyways.

4th vessel is nice, but not a requirement. I had the space and desire to double batch so I went with it. Anyone else using 4?

I actually use 5...or 4...or 3. I adapted my previous smaller 5 gallon batch system so that it links in with my 3 vessel herms system. I use a 7.75 gallon mt that sits on top of my bk as the 4th vessel most of the time, or sometimes a 7 gallon boil kettle to kind of boost the heating times. I also use the entire thing to double the volume of the batches and "guess" that I could now do a thirty one gallon batch...

I guess I actually use a 5th vessel. My old Orange Cooler MLT is now a Cold Liquor Tank. I use this for the chilling water on the final pass with my CFC. I load it up with water and a bunch of frozen water bottles. I don't use ice, just those. I gets plenty cold went left submerged long enough.