Well, I started out just wanting to change my fermentation chamber situation, I currently use 60L Speidel fermenters and I put them each in their own 5cuft chest freezer (it has an external temp controller that allows it to operate at greater than freezing temps). And it's a snug fit. I have to push the empty fermenter into the chest freezer before filling it. I do 10 gallon batches, usually 11.5 into the fermenter. When it's done fermenting I have to heave that SOB out of the chest freezer so I can transfer. That's about 95lbs that I have to bend over and awkwardly pull out of the chest freezer, and generally the freezer wants to lift up with the fermentation vessel, so I'm kind of using my hip to hold it down. I just have nightmares about my back going out and having the fermenter bodyslam me into the ground before bursting open leaving me laying there in 10 gallons of beer for hours until my wife wonders where I am.
That and I've been using that set-up for at least 6 years and although those Speidel fermenters are very nice and I take very good care of them plastic fermenters don't last forever. I run a hose from the top into a sanitized jar filled a couple inches full with food safe sanitizer solution. When fermentation is active there is usually a steady bubbling in the jar as CO2 gets pushed out. Lately I'm not getting any bubbles, so the CO2 is getting out somewhere else. That's not too big a deal, but what I don't like is when I "cold crash" the beer, which is to drop the temp from mid 60s to 33F quickly and let it sit there for a couple more days before kegging (cold crashing help to get all the solids to "fall" out of the beer and collect at the bottom). I'm worried that once I chill the beer and create a little negative pressure inside the vessel that oxygen is getting pulled in, and that's not good at all.
So I started with those two concerns in mind. A few places are now offering home brew level (for avid homebrewers) stainless steel conical fermenters at semi-reasonable prices. These conicals have options that allow you to control fermentation temps (both heating and cooling), ferment under pressure and do a closed pressure transfer from the fermenter into kegs. I can even carbonate the beer in the fermenter, including naturally carbonating the beer as it ferments. So I was set on going with a conical, but figured if I was going to make that jump I might as well move up in batch size, so I was now set on making 15 gallon batches. So that turned into needing new kettles and I have a few complaints about my current kettles with their weldless fittings and a few spots that tend to rust (not a good beer flavoring) and need a lot of attention and repassivation periodically. So I didn't want weldless fittings and I didn't want NPT fittings (threads are a good place for stuff to hide) so I wanted tri-clamp fittings.
And so I'm just sort of daydreaming about this and a guy I know who has been deployed with the Army Reserve or whatever asks for my opinion on a complete brew system that is pretty much the same type of set-up I currently have. I tell him it's pretty good, but I've been thinking about selling my system and it'll cost a hell of a lot less and be able to do a good bit more. He's on board and I started really figuring out where I wanted to go with a new system. I'm making a major process change from a 3-vessel HERMS system to a 2-vessel RIMS system, and another major change from a PID controlled panel to a software PLC type automated system that offers flexibility and the ability to create "scripts" to really control each step. So now I have hydrostatic pressure sensors to determine how full the kettles are, flowmeters to make sure I'm not running my RIMS element dry, electronic valves that open and close based on software commands, a touchscreen tablet connected to the panel via wifi so I can monitor the brew system from anywhere in the house.
Okay, I'm excited about the system so I could probably write 10x as much but I know this is already way tl;dr for 99.9% of readers.
