1 BBL MashTun

Got a BrewBuilt 31 gallon stainless steel kettle for use as my MashTun. With the upgrade to the 1 BBL BK, I wasn't going to be able to mash enough grains to fill it and MoreBeer had a sale of 10% off earlier this month, so I jumped in and got the 1 BBL kettle with TC and false bottom. It is almost identical to the SS Brewtech I got, except it is a LOT shinier and has much better/larger volume etchings (and no valves or whirlpool fittings). This came with two TC fittings (similar to SS) and was identical in dimensions.

It has a triclad heavy bottom (about 3/8" thick) and is a thick layer of aluminium sandwiched between two thin outer layers of stainless. While I didn't need this, as I'm not going to be direct firing this, and it was going to present some problems (or challenges, at least) to installing a bottom TC drain, it was pretty standard fare for kettles these days.

So, I finally balled up my courage and began drilling through the bottom; forever ruining this kettle.

I decided I still wanted to try to pull the ferrule through the hole, just to help seal the triclad aluminium and make a nice dimple. For that, due to the thickness, I was going to need to make the hole closer to the 35mm I.D. of the TC rather than the normal 32mm hole.

Once it was through the bottom, I had to spend quite a bit of time cleaning up the hole and getting it smooth. The aluminium center is quite soft compared to the stainless outer shells.

Then I had the difficult time of pulling the mandrile cone through evenly and get it domed out. But it actually went ok, once I got the cone centered and pressing all around (it originally started off to one side and didn't start the dimple on one). Then I just had to flip the jig around and pull it through from the outside. It actually fit in pretty well with a rubber mallet.

Once it was centered in there with just a little over insertion for the solder ring, it was time to suspend it level where I could heat the bottom

Unfortunately, the thick triclad bottom really wicks heat away and it was really hard to get to temps that could melt the solder through it all with propane. I switched to mapp gas, and it helped a little, but still not hot enough and hard to monitor progress from under the kettle. After a half hour of heating and re-applying flux, it was still cold soldering and beading up. I needed two torches working, and that wasn't going to happen right now, so I drilled the 1/2" return sparge hole up near the top just off center from the front.

Surprisingly, the fitting is holding water just fine without any sign of leaks. I still really want to get two torches on the fitting (one on the bottom and one inside with more flux and solder to make a smoother fit to the ferrule edge.