BREWHA Kettles

[Salpino]

Anyone familiar with the BREWHA line of kettles?

http://brewha.co/products/boil-kettle

Not cheap, at almost $900 for their 16 gallon kettle, but I'm extremely curious about the jacketed design with built in tri-clamps for cooling. I'm wondering how long it would take to cool a 5 or 10 gallon batch to pitching temp.

 

[wilserbrewer]

Wow, some nice equipment! Some price tag as well, but for what you get it doesn't seem unreasonable...the Ferrari of brew kettles so to say. The new benchmark has been set!

Chilling times are very dependent on water temps, with cold water input I would expect that to chill very well.

 

[sweetcell]

that's one sweet kettle!

one drawback of this design is that the hot wort doesn't circulate. so the wort on the outside, touching the jacket, will cool while the center will remain hot. you can mix the wort manually, but opening up the kettle during the later stages of cooling could result in bugs getting in there. but maybe there is a solution to this that i'm not seeing.

 

[Salpino]

that's one sweet kettle!

one drawback of this design is that the hot wort doesn't circulate. so the wort on the outside, touching the jacket, will cool while the center will remain hot. you can mix the wort manually, but opening up the kettle during the later stages of cooling could result in bugs getting in there. but maybe there is a solution to this that i'm not seeing.

My current eBIAB setup is 2.5 gallons--this exact setup: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f170/110v-recirculating-ebiab-2-5-gallon-batches-341219/, which utilizes a pump to recirculate the mash, and I currently recirculate through my plate chiller back to the kettle until temps get below 70 degrees. I don't see why I couldn't recirculate the wort while chilling with this kettle design.

I'm just floored by the design--very nice looking kettle and eliminates the need for a plate, counterflow, or immersion chiller.

It's only money...

 

[ScubaSteve]

Looks like a great product. That's a reasonable price considering the labor involved with drilling through the double walled jacket and then welding in a triclover fitting. It probably doesn't chill as fast as a standard IC, but that probably doesn't matter too much.

A low-tech version of this could be accomplished by wrapping copper coil around the outside of the kettle and covering with reflectix, etc.....you get insulation and a chilling method in the same form factor. This is the same kind of hardware seen in the jacketed conicals.

 

[sweetcell]

I don't see why I couldn't recirculate the wort while chilling with this kettle design.

you certainly could, but it's not currently designed for it. you could pull the wort out from the valve, but how to return? you would need to notch the lid and add a whirlpool return arm. you can't punch a hole through the sides to add another valve (at least not easily, you would need to seal up the hole since it would go through the cooling jacket).

 

[Salpino]

you certainly could, but it's not currently designed for it. you could pull the wort out from the valve, but how to return? you would need to notch the lid and add a whirlpool return arm. you can't punch a hole through the sides to add another valve (at least not easily, you would need to seal up the hole since it would go through the cooling jacket).

Going through the lid would indeed be the only option. I use Bobby's high-flow elbow barb with a Camlock F right now to go through the lid of my current kettle: http://www.brewhardware.com/fittings-75/115-elbarb

I then hook up silicone tubing to the elbow and it rests on top of the grain "bed" inside my BIAB bag.

The kettle isn't cheap, but sure seems like a kettle I could be happy with for a long time.

One other thing I noticed--the tri-clamp for the element is 2" instead of the 1.5" Bobby uses for his element connection kit: http://www.brewhardware.com/rimsherms-parts-93/176-elementparts . Not sure if there is a similar kit out there that uses 2" tri-clamps.

 

[Epimetheus]

It has a niche. it is simple and the tri-clamps are very sanitary, and uses passive cooling rather than a pump. No electronics other than the elements, and I guess you unplug them to control the heat, feedback loop via the mechanical thermometer and Mark-I eyeball.

You will get better efficiency and temperature control BUT at the cost of complexity - pump, PID controller, re-circulating piping, thermocouple. The cooling efficiency cannot be as high as a counterflow plate chiller because of the geometry. I'm thinking the jacket has to be full and vented before applying heat.

 

[ScubaSteve]

The jacket doesn't go all the way to the top. You could put a return in the upper portion of the wall....or have them do it.

Or, you could just get a Blichmann for half the price (never thought I'd say that) and add an internal coil that runs as close to the pot wall as possible. Just scrub the coil well and spray it down...you have to do it anyway with a regular pot. .

 

[Salpino]

Or, you could just get a Blichmann for half the price (never thought I'd say that) and add an internal coil that runs as close to the pot wall as possible. Just scrub the coil well and spray it down...you have to do it anyway with a regular pot. .

Never thought I'd say that either...

The BREWHA website is relatively new, with only six youtube videos walking through the different products. No brewing videos or spec sheets to be seen. $900 is a lot of coin for me to drop on a product no one has heard of or seen in person.

I have my plate chiller submerged in an ice water bath, with cooling water inlet fed by a pond pump submerged in an ice water bath as well. If I were to hook the jacket inlet to an ice-water submerged pond pump, while recirculating the wort, I have to imagine the chilling performance would be decent.

 

[grathan]

It's got 5 tri-clover ports. Surely 1 of them could be used to recirculate no?

The ruler simply hanging in there seems kinda dumb.

 

[Salpino]

It's got 5 tri-clover ports. Surely 1 of them could be used to recirculate no?

The ruler simply hanging in there seems kinda dumb.

I'm guessing they couldn't put a sight glass in due to the cooling jacket, but yeah, the ruler looks tacky.

I guess I should have looked at their mash tun as well.

http://brewha.co/products/mash-tun

Single 2" triclover for a single element, with a false bottom that rests above the thermowell and element. It has a tri-clover at the top of the kettle for recirculating wort. It's $100 cheaper, and you lose the jacketed cooling, but this sure seems like the better balance of features for a eBIAB system.

 

[sweetcell]

It's got 5 tri-clover ports. Surely 1 of them could be used to recirculate no?

the intended uses for those 5 ports are: 2 for cooling jacket recirculation (so no input into the kettle), 2 for electric elements, and the spigot/valve. the spigot is the only one that is available for recirc. i suppose you could use one of the element ports if you only use 1 element, but that would mean moving to 240 Volts.

if you want to recirc, notching the lid and dropping in a tube/pipe/return arm/etc is the best solution as far as i can tell.

 

[grathan]

Ahh, I didn't think about jacket recirc ports. I wonder if the water is channeled throughout the jacket or if just flows freely through a gap in the walls.

 

[kevink]

The outlet port ferrule is pretty big. You can add an inlet and an outlet to a tri clamp end cap and recirc that way. Weld a dip tube to the end cap for your outlet and also weld a inlet to the same end cap next to the outlet. Give it a little bend on the inside to direct the wort upwards so you get some mixing going on.

 

[xico]

I figured I'd pick up this thread and ask what people think about this kettle now that it has been a couple years.

Also, I was wondering if the kettle could be used as a mash tun too. Could one regulate the temperature, so long as there was some circulation, by filling the jacket with how water instead of a HERMS or RIMS system?

A two tank system, one HLT with element that is pumped into the jacket and back that is then converted to a wort transfer preboil. The second is this vessel as MT turned kettle. I am sure there are some flaws obvious to more experienced brewers that I'm not seeing but I wanted to ask. One I can see is sorting out the false bottom. I am particularly interested in the cooling and heating potential of the jacket.

 

[quaboagbrewing]

A low-tech version of this could be accomplished by wrapping copper coil around the outside of the kettle and covering with reflectix, etc.....you get insulation and a chilling method in the same form factor. This is the same kind of hardware seen in the jacketed conicals.

My buddy and I were just discussing this yesterday during a bottling session. I use an immersion chiller because I like the idea that I can visually inspect to make sure it's clean. But you still are putting this in contact with the wort so even though it's in the kettle for the last 15 minutes of the boil and I know it should be fine like the idea of chilling without any contact to the wort. So why not wrap a coil around the outside of the kettle and then throw some fermwarp around that. Curious if anyone has ever tried this? Only drawback I can think of is because you are chilling the outside of the kettle maybe it would take too long to get down to pitching temps but if this works for jacketed kettles why not this.