Beer Forum

I'm not sure what to think about this one. Just a basic setup, the selling point being it's modular. If they're being smart, they've realized that Morebeer and the one Sam Caligiione uses as his pilot brewery (bad memory) have the high end of the sculpture market cornered and he's trying to work in the empty sub-$1500 market. That goes counter to Blichmann's previous products, which are usually the top end of the market.

What do you guys think?

http://www.blichmannengineering.com/TopTier.htm

As with most Blichmann products I think it will be way over priced. Not to mention I don't really see what it's got over some cajun cookers stacked on wooden boxes and such. Yep it will look fancy but it still works the same. Sorry to be the first to knock it.

I was disappointed when I saw the pix of it. Truely not a high end sculpture, and I'm with BadRock, it WILL have a high end price.

It looks like a clothing store rack.

Not to be critical (ok, I'll be critical) it looks like they simply bolted stainless hurricane burners to the center stand. While this may be a good idea, it is not very unique, and would be easy for your average Joe to do. Given this, maybe their best angle would be to sell a kit with their center post and brackets for the burners... buy your own burners and bolt it together type thing. But as a prefab "sculpture" I'll pass... even if I could afford it several times over.

Honestly, that looks like someone just slapped a Blichmann boil kettle on a homemade 3-tier. If that's actually a commercial unit it doesn't even live up to Blichmann's aesthetics. It looks, honestly, like crap. Give me an hour in the shop and I could weld up something 10x better and I can guarantee it'd sell for less. Definitely a letdown.

The most expensive part of the rig is the boil kettle and who needs a thermometer and a sight glass in their boil kettle. By the looks of it, it's not worth more than $800. I agree with Bad Rock. I do like their products (fermenator is bad ass) but sometimes they are over the top.

captain carrot wrote:The most expensive part of the rig is the boil kettle and who needs a thermometer and a sight glass in their boil kettle. By the looks of it, it's not worth more than $800. I agree with Bad Rock. I do like their products (fermenator is bad ass) but sometimes they are over the top.

It's certainly not a new or innovative design, and if it's $1500, way too expensive. It's essentially the same as the BrewTree from years ago. The site is still there, but I think they went tits-up for poor customer service. This link purports to be a DIY guide to building something similar: http://www.brewtree.com/page/page/3484770.htm

I have the Boilermakers and love the sightglass. Useful for collecting a certain boil volume as well as monitoring boil-off rate. Yes, there's other ways to do this, but I find it very useful. The boilermakers work well but have two problems: the thermometer is placed way too high and the boil screen does NOT work with pellet hops. Luckily I use only whole hops and use thermoprobes to grab temps off the kettle outputs.



Michael