At 8 barrels, a two-vessel brewhouse sits in the range where a brewpub pours most of what it makes and a small production house runs three to five turns a day without buying a third tank. One vessel handles mash and lautering, the other boils and whirlpools. Fewer tanks mean fewer transfer steps, less floor space, and less cleaning labor per brew — the trade-off is that you lose the ability to lauter and boil simultaneously, which matters once you push past roughly 1,200 barrels a year.

The mash/lauter tun carries a full-width false bottom with 0.7 mm wedge wire slots, a side grain-out door, and a sparge ring sized for the bed diameter rather than the tank diameter. Our kettle uses a dished bottom and a tangential whirlpool inlet positioned to give you a settled trub cone in about 20 minutes — place it too low and you scour the cone back into suspension.

Wort contact surfaces are 304 stainless, 3 mm shell, with 316L offered for kettle interiors when the grist is heavily hopped or acidified. Interior welds are purged, ground, pickled and passivated; the visible finish is a mechanical polish, not a cosmetic buff. Kettle jackets are dimple-type, rated for 15 psi steam with a separate relief valve, and we hydro-test every jacket at 1.5× working pressure before shipment. All vessel connections are TC clamp fittings — no threaded ports on the wort path.

Typical configurations

Brewpubs usually order steam-jacketed kettles with a low-pressure boiler, direct-fire if gas is cheap and space is tight. Production breweries tend toward electric or steam with a dedicated whirlpool rest, plus a wort grant and flow meter. Skid-mounted or on separate legs — both are common; tell us your ceiling height and doorway width before we finalize dimensions.

Specifications

Frequently asked

Can I add a third vessel later? Yes if the frame and piping headers are sized for it at build. Retrofitting a kettle onto a two-vessel skid is expensive.

Is the whirlpool inlet usable for CIP returns? No — keep them separate. Sharing the line leaves hop debris in the spray ball.

How much headspace do I need? Roughly 25% above the boil volume; anything less and you will lose wort to foaming on high-gravity batches.

Send us your batch size, beer styles, brews per day, steam or electric preference, and a floor plan with ceiling height. We will come back with vessel dimensions, jacket area, and a piping layout that matches what you actually brew.