Rim-supported stainless inner pot

The food vessel, not its support

This is the pot that holds the milk, curd or whey. A larger pot or kettle holds the surrounding water, so the two vessels have different jobs: the inner pot contains the food while the outer one forms the water jacket. Here “rim-supported” describes how the inner vessel stays in place: its handles or rim rest on the edge of the larger vessel.

That arrangement is distinct from the separate rack, bridge or trivet record. A rack or trivet sits below a pot and carries its base; a rim-supported pot is itself the food-holding vessel, and its handles carry it at the outer rim. Tony Hamblyn’s account documents this second arrangement. It does not document a rack beneath his cheese pot.

A cheesemaker’s nested-pot setup

Tony Hamblyn described adapting his home brewery in New Zealand for cheesemaking. His brewery used 70-litre pots; he removed the false bottom from the mash tun and lowered a 50-litre pot inside, resting its handles on the larger vessel’s rim. He called the result a double boiler. The account documents one workable arrangement, not a standard product specification or a recommendation for every brewer.

In that setup, water was heated separately, fed by gravity into the space around the cheese pot and returned by a pump. A ball valve regulated the return flow, and temperature controllers governed the water system. The inner pot kept the milk in a separate, open vessel: Hamblyn added culture and rennet there and used the setup for milk heating and holding. His description provides no load rating for the inner-pot handles or outer rim.

A later update describes the same broad system as a versatile home brewery and cheesemaking arrangement. The vessels were still separate: one held hot water, others served cheesemaking, and another was used for brewing. This distinction matters when reading the photographs: the pot containing milk is not the kettle that heats or circulates its surrounding water.

How the water jacket heats the contents

Heat moves from the bath water through the wall of the inner pot to the milk. The contents therefore remain separate from the brewer’s heating element and water circuit. Hamblyn’s arrangement circulated bath water around the inner vessel rather than pumping milk through the brewery’s hoses. The double-boiler photograph shows the same nested-pan principle in ordinary stovetop cookware, although it does not show a water line or a cheesemaking batch.

The bath and milk do not change temperature at the same pace. In the interview, Hamblyn reported that heating a typical 25–30 litres of milk to 72 °C took more than an hour in his setup. That figure describes his system and batch, not a target or expected heating time for another pot. The inner pot is not a temperature controller: a probe in the water reports the bath, while a separate reading in the food is needed to know the milk’s temperature.

Material, fit and limits

The sources show stainless-steel cookware as a suitable form, but they do not identify the alloy or grade of Hamblyn’s 50-litre pot in writing. Penn State Extension recommends food-grade stainless steel or sturdy plastic for cheesemaking utensils and says equipment kept for cheese should, if possible, be dedicated to that use. This page concerns a stainless-steel inner-pot form; it does not imply that every ordinary pot is food-contact suitable.

The 50-litre figure belongs to Hamblyn’s single example. No general capacity or dimensions apply to the wider class, and the sources do not state the load rating of the handles, rim or outer pot. A full inner pot may be heavy; do not treat the described hobby setup as a manufacturer rating. The false bottom is a different brewer component: KegLand’s manual says the BrewZilla false bottom is not designed to support a grain bill, so it must not be assumed to support a second pot.

Cheesemaking applications

A separate inner pot can serve as the food vessel in a water-bath adaptation for cheeses that require heating milk or curd. Halloumi and feta recipes on Fermenta describe cheese-making processes that may be paired with an appropriately sized water-bath vessel; their own recipe steps remain the operative instructions and do not prescribe Hamblyn’s nested-brewery setup. The equipment link records an adaptation, not a required traditional vessel or a claim that every recipe was made in this exact pot.