The Brew Kettle (left) is a converted 15 1/2 gallon keg with three fittings silver soldered in place for supply, return and sight gauge. It is nothing special with the exception of the return port that is used for filling the Kettle with sweet wort from the Mash Tun and when the brewing is done, the main pump can be used to whirlpool the bitter wort. No more stirring with a long handled spoon with steam trying to roast my hands. This came in especially handy when I used an immersion chiller for cooling the wort. In the bottom of the kettle is a braided stainless strainer to remove as much of the trub as possible when pumping to the fermenter.The stainless strainer was just a flat piece of screen wire that I wrapped and pinched one end and rolled it up. Taking a pair of vise grips and pinching it tightly the screen stays in shape and then was held in place with a stainless worm clamp.

The sight gauge has marks on the kettle in 1/2 gallon graduations so you can see where you are for your targeted pre and post boil points. Sure beats finding out that you are off one way or the other when you see it in the fermenter. Calibration of the site gauge was done with hot water so there is no need for calculating the 4% variance due to expansion of hot liquid.

Both the brew kettle and the Hot Liquor Pot sit on top of a pair of 170,000 BTU propane fired burner from Metal Fusion. To make life easier and reduce the singed eyebrows and arm hair, 2 electronic igniters were installed for the burners and everything is hard plumbed to prevent the potential of gas leaks. To give automation to the firing of the burners I used a pair of Hot Surface Ignition Controllers which operate on 24v AC and then fire relays that switch 110v AC gas control valves. The reason for this   configuration is that the gas valves that are commonly used with the hot surface controller are 24 vac but are designed for low pressure gas. Even though I enlarged the orifices for the burners, I still couldn't get the BTU's needed to get reasonable temperature boosts, so I traded them out for a couple of 120 vac gas solenoids donated by a good friend of mine and everything works fine. A better description and pictures are on the "Burners" page of this site.