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Marchisio tanks


Curt

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Does anyone have any experience with Marchisio tanks? They are available in 100, 200, and 300 liter sizes, and pretty reasobably priced. The only down side I can tell is that the spigot on the bottom is 3/4 inch.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this. Again, we're are small scale and looking for something for small batch/R &D type stuff.

Thanks

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Hey Silk City,

Would you mind sharing who you got them through and how you got the changes in them that you mentioned, a pic would be great, but no worries if that his too much of a hassle? I'm currently looking through a local wine shop and they have them for about 550$ for the 300 L, which seems like a pretty great deal.

Thanks for the reply.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi Curt,

We use the Variable Volume floating lid wine style tanks for almost everything in the distillery. I have a few brands: Marchisio and Albrigi are the ones I can recall right now.

I collect spirits from the still in a 100L, store 95% in a 500L, hold filtered blending water in a 700L, ferment in 1000L and am currently upgrading to 2150L fermenters.

You can order then from any commercial wine supplier with a plethora of options. My smaller (under 200L) tanks come standard with a 1/2 spigot, but every tank over 250L I pay extra for the 1.5" triclamp. I keep them on resin pallets and use a forklift/pallet jack to move them around. As a DIY solution you can purchase a 1/2"NPT to 1.5" triclamp adapter and switch out the spigots for TC, but the flows won't be as good as with a true 1.5"TC

A 2150L tank with triclamp and sampling vavle runs about $3000CAD, a far cry from the $6500CAD solid lid tanks (but has no cooling jacket)

Downsides:
No temp controll
The lids have to checked every day or two to make sure the pump/bladder is still inflated
if a lid falls down ti can be a pain to fish it out
If you float the lid on the spirits (which I don't do) you risk flavour transfer in the plastic bladder area.
the air pump/bladder replacement parts are more expensive then you think. So if you break a pump its about $100 to replace.

Upside:
So. Damn. Cheap.
light and movable
Easy to clean (just lift the lid and scrub)
Did I mention just ho cheap these are?

These work very well for me and my process.

Cheers!
 

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They work fine and aren't many other options I've found in that same size/price range but to vent for a minute I found them to be very irritating to work with. The flat bottom and outlet located above the floor required a lot of tipping/leaning/dumping to get all the reside out. You can get a tri-clamp racking arm (https://morewinemaking.com/products/15-triclamp-rotating-racking-arm.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMInfmr9JO-1gIVh2B-Ch1SsAzREAQYAyABEgLIQfD_BwE) which helps but not much. One place I worked had a thin wall tank (I think it was Letina) that had a pitched floor and an outlet flush with the bottom which was much easier to work with, but it was on wheels to accommodate the bottom valve and eventually a wheel wrenched off from the tank while it was full which was nearly a disaster. The floating lids are also deeply annoying for the reasons Wayward mentioned ( and some spirits also have a propensity to eat through the inflatable gasket material).    

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I've got a flat bottom 90 gallon tank with a similar drain design and I absolutely regret purchasing it.  I've been meaning to have a bottom drain installed but I keep forgetting, only to remember every time I want to drain it, rinse it or wash it.  It sounds easy, but it takes extra time and you have to be careful not to damage the tank or the fittings every time you tilt it.

There's nothing quite like purchasing a piece of equipment that requires you to put in more effort and time to do the same amount of work.

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