i've had 7 55 gallon stainless drums sitting in my garage collecting dust for about 6 months. i've decided to put them to use as a 55 gallon system hopefully early next month. i brew with 2 other guys, and brewing on a converted keg system just isn't working. we are pretty much forced to brew every week. that really doesn't bother me, although when someone runs out of beer and decides to siphon off 5 gallons from primary 3 days in without telling me, well, that bothers me.
i'm building it to hold our old kegs as well, so i can brew smaller batches whenever i feel like it. i'm not going to want 45 gallons of everything, that's for sure.
i already bought 3 huge banjo burners, and hooked one up already on the old system. those things are pretty sweet. i need another pump because this thing is going to be single-tier. it'll all be quick disconnects, with outlets AND inlets (i'm sick of the hose falling out of the vessel and losing a quart of wort). and i still need either a counterflow or plate chiller, an immersion would cost an arm and a leg. i'll bang together a copper sparge arm, pickup tube, etc.
is there anything else i'm missing here? anything that would make my life easier? the one thing i'm still trying to figure out is the false bottom. right now we have one on the mash tun, and it's served us well. a 23" diameter ss false bottom is going to be EXPENSIVE. i've never tried a stainless braid, do you think that would do the job? i don't want a stuck sparge with 125 pounds of grain...
we'll probably modify one or two of those drums into big conicals. that's a whole other project though.
