Stainless fermenter... yes or no?

[augiedoggy]

Unitanks arent necessarily for serving from. they are mainly designed to serve the function of both the primary fermenter and the secondary brite tank. while its true you could serve from it, that not often the typical use. some smaller brew pubs do it if they do not keg or sell beer other than through their taproom.

 

[augiedoggy]

you are correct, thread was about best fermenters

you are correct, OP did inquire about best fermenters, but a later post indicated a $200-300 budget, $400 was pushing it. $500 no way. if we could get unitanks with heat/cool for $300 we'd all have them. I've seen your builds, etc. nice stuff. love it.
I built my kegmenters with internal stainless coils, heat belt, glycol pumps and controllers for $230 ea. my ghetto glycol chiller cost me $165 with glycol.
my dream brewery has to wait until I get two children out of college. brew on

The most I paid for any of my stainless conical fermentors at home was $350. Bought one used and 2 new off ebay (they cannot hold more than 2psi pressure though).. Got a free chiller from work myself and I used ghetto 1.5" blue discharge hose for effective jacketing and $4 solenoid valves to control cooling, free xerox copier paper drawer heaters for heat.. where theres a will theres a way, with just about any budget. used stuff comes up all the time as people jump out of the hobby or upgrade to new shinier bobbles.. Sometimes its not about the brand names but rather the features they offer. I believe my entire home brewery cost me under 1700.. I have one of the 12.5gallon versions of this at home and its a great fermenter within the ops budget..

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Stout-Tank...002058?hash=item4b6100fd8a:g:~GQAAOSwhMpT0JNOperfect size for this cooling jacket which I use on it.
http://www.gotta-brew.com/products/cool-zone-cooling-jacket.html
and heres an actual stainless unitank for about $450 shipped...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/34L-Full-S...026450?hash=item2642e47812:g:txwAAOSwaEVfMSta
I'm still using plastic conicals at the pub with stainless coils installed in the lids and gutter heat tape around the body for cooling and separate stainless brites until we get our renovations done and can use the new unitanks we bought.

 

[shipfaced]

Happy with the new Anvil SS 7.5 gal fermenter tho it has a quirk. For some strange reason it will not drain the last 4-5 inches. To remedy this we slipped a length of small dia hose over a broken airlock ... gets things moving with lung pressure. To cool it I hung a dedicated window A/C unit (smallest to be had) ... in a spare bedroom, takes 4 days to (mostly) ferment at a nice safe 65F. Because it's SS you can put it right in front of the A/C unit, there are no worries about light ruining the brew. Later it's no trouble to remove this nice, light window shaker for the next time.