Boil kettle - seen good deals lately?

[Chriso]

It's upgrade time around the Damn! brewery, and I'm about ready to pull the trigger on a Sabco supa-special Keggle - this is the $99 special, $124 shipped, with just the top cut open, no bulkheads.

Before I shoot in my order, though, I wanted to ask my fellow thrifty equipment experts. Has anyone seen any exceptional deals on boiling kettles lately?

I've been eyeing the 15 gal from MoreBeer with the two couplings welded in, and the plug in the thermometer port... but $229 is most of my upgrade budget, and I need to look at a burner/regulator upgrade too. Also need to buy more bulk grain. So I'm trying to save my pennies as I work on this!

I thought pretty strongly about an aluminum pot, but I really like the tall, narrow style of keggles, vs the very wide, short look of most of the Instawares/Polarware/etc kettles. I don't like the additional boil-off that comes with such a wide pot.

Anyone have any other suggestions? I'll probably shoot in my order tomorrowish if nothing comes up.

 

[WOP31]

I have heard of guys getting pretty good deals on stock pots from this place:

http://www.divine-mercantile.com/

 

[Soulive]

I always tried to get stuff used if I can. Craigslist, eBay, or HBT are good resources...

 

[Brentk14]

where are you gonna get a keggle for 125 shipped?

 

[Chriso]

where are you gonna get a keggle for 125 shipped?

http://www.brew-magic.com/ketl_blowout.html - Legal used keg from Sabco.

@Soulive, CL is unfortunately not very effective because Lincoln is not very big, and not near another big metro, excluding Omaha, which is about an hour. I'll def do some searching though. Like you, I prefer to recycle when possible, conserve our resources and etc. ... I found Pedalbiker's stuff on eBay, but he's a hair expensive for anything with a welded coupling.... he includes dual couplings, too, for thermo and valve, but mounts the thermo way towards the bottom, and I wouldn't like that much, too easy to break.... He's my backup option, if Sabco doesn't work out.....

As for HBT, well... Offers always welcome if anyone is dying to get rid of large kettles. I pm'd the guy from Kansas, but he was trying to give his keggle away to someone from the local club first, then outsiders. As for the WI guy in classifieds, email sent.

 

[PseudoChef]

I think my wide, aluminum, 60qt pot was well worth $50. Just means I can sparge longer (and somewhat increasing my efficiency) to compensate for the higher boil-off.

 

[Desert_Sky]

It's upgrade time around the Damn! brewery, and I'm about ready to pull the trigger on a Sabco supa-special Keggle - this is the $99 special, $124 shipped, with just the top cut open, no bulkheads.

Just bought one of those today actually. I have the Sabco kettle I picked up last year, so I got one of these to convert into my mashtun for my upcoming rig.

My kettle is just tits. The welds are perfect and so is the keg itself. I figured since Im spending the cash I might as well have it look good also. I have the bazooka tubes inside my kettle, which much makes whirlpooling useless. It will however let me use as many whole hops that I want without even slowing down the flow.

 

[kickflip_mj]

just go down to your local brewery or microbrewery and ask them if you can buy any from them.. i live by sierra nevada and i called them and they didnt have crap, so i went into this really small micro brewery in town and they sold me a what looked to be brand new keg for $55, and i bought one of those morebeer conversion kits for the sanke and it turned out perfect... so my advice is look around first before you pay an arm and a leg for shipping.... besides once you get the thing built you will feel accomplished... thanks yuri for the videos on home to cut the top off.

 

[biggenius29]

I actually got really lucky and one morning while driving into work I spotted something steel in the ditch. I stopped to check it out, and what do you know, it was a keg.

 

[Dycokac]

I actually got really lucky and one morning while driving into work I spotted something steel in the ditch. I stopped to check it out, and what do you know, it was a keg.

didn't happen to be full also did it

 

[BrewBeemer]

Two bottles of Old Rasputin netted me two used 15.5 gallon Anheuser-Bush kegs from a local Budweiser driver after I gave him this forums address. A win win as he also wants to brew his own.
I pulled three 7.75 gallon kegs from a dumpster near a Round Table Pizza that went out of business.