Stainless fermenter for wine

Does anyone have one of these stainless variable volume wine fermenters like this 100 liter at Midwest, or this 50 liter halfway down the page at Northern Brewer?

I'm wondering how well they are constructed and where the ball valve is located on them. Is it a flat bottom or conical? How does the floating lid work? I was thinking I might could make a similar fermenter from a large stainless pot, like one of those 60 or 80 quart crawfish pots.

I've also got a spare 50 liter keggle that already has a ball valve. If I can come up with a floating lid mechanism, it should make a good wine fermenter.

I believe they have a flat bottom and the valve is very close to the bottom. Cannot remember if it has a pickup tube.

The lid has an inflatable gasket like a inner tube that holds against the side of the fermenter to form the seal.

Very slick.

The inflatable floating gasket part will be hard to duplicate in a food grade rubber.

If I can fashion a lid to hold the inflatable seal in place, I bet this site would have a size that would work for me. Either the Inflatable Vinyl Gasket or the Inflatable Black Rubber Gasket. These are probably the same as the ones used by the SS variable volume tanks I linked to. The WineryParts site sells those too.

After extensive research, I've completely given up on this idea of stainless fermenters for wine. It is completely unnecessary for the home winemaker.

While it may not be the home winemaking standard, a very common and inexpensive fermenter for making wine is the Rubbermaid Brute garbage can. You can get them in 10, 20, 32, or 44 gallon sizes. I believe there is even a 50 gallon size. All are popular with home winemakers; just choose according to your anticipated volumes. The ones that are grey, white, or yellow in color are all NSF-approved for food. The red ones are not NSF-approved. The lids (sold separately) fit on well enough to keep out bugs and dust (but maybe not fruit flies, if you have those in your area), and let out the CO2 gas. You don't need an airlock.

I am making wines from six gallon kits right now, so I bought two 10 gallon Brute fermenters. I'll be making two batches of wine at a time. (I also bought a couple of the 20 gallon ones, as they make nice storage containers for 50 to 55 lb sacks of 2-row base malts.)

For clearing, it is typical for kit wine makers to use a six gallon carboy since it minimizes head space and oxidation potential. I have one of these six gallon carboys, so I'll be on the look out for one more. I'd rather not use my 6.5 or my two 5 gallon carboys for clearing a six gallon kit since I don't want extra head space nor do I want to split my batches.

I'm sure there are other threads that discuss the Brute fermenter, but I just wanted to close out this thread with information about an inexpensive alternative to stainless for the home winemaker.