50 gal stainless vat

If the tank has a floating lid, you may not need to worry about batch (or budget) size.

Jeff

That has to be one big sucker. Can you get it through a door?

In my opinion, your storage capacity should be at least three times your batch capacity. So you are looking at more carboys for storage, a few hundred dollars a batch, and low variety in product output.

Unless you have severe emotional ties to this vat, have it appraised, find a charitable organization that wants it, and take the tax deduction. OR sell it on ebay.

Dick

snipped-for-privacy@smart.net (Dick Adams) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:

It is only about 26 inches in diameter.

In article , Dick Adams writes

I'm a bit puzzled by this statement Dick, could you explain it please.

I arrived at this rule of thumb by considering brewing schedules. If you brew a 5 gal batch, you need a 5 gal primary, a 5 gal secondary, and 5 gals of bottles. That's three times. With a conical fermenter, it's two times.

But if you finish fermenting a second batch before the first batch has been consumed you need more storage. Brew something that needs to age, e.g., Barleywine, Lambic, Mead, etc., and you need even more.

Brew a beer a week you'll approach 5 times. A friend got out of the homebrew game and had 540 pint bottles, i.e., 70 gallons!!

Dick

Thanks, I can see your point. I hadn't thought of storage in that sense.