A 5,000-liter conical tank with a dimple cooling jacket is the size where a small commercial winery stops improvising. It holds one 3 to 4 ton red grape lot, and it lets you hold fermentation temperature instead of chasing it. During peak fermentation, red must can climb 8 to 10 °F in a few hours. Without jacket area on both the cone and the side wall, that spike gets managed with ice packs and cold water hoses.

We build these as variable-capacity vessels. The 60-degree cone drains completely and keeps the lees pile compact, which matters at racking time and when pomace comes out of the bottom hatch. A 400 mm top manway takes a person for shovel-out or CIP inspection. When the tank doubles as a storage vessel, we fit an inflatable floating lid with an FDA-grade gasket so the headspace stays under CO2. On fermentation duty, it gets a fixed top with an airlock or a pressure and vacuum relief valve instead. Tell us which role the tank plays and we build to that.

Shell and cone are SUS304 as standard, 3 mm shell and 2.5 mm cone. High-acid lots and long macerations often call for 316L on the wine contact surfaces. Welds are TIG, interior seams ground flush, then pickled and passivated after fabrication. Wine contact finish is #4; the exterior is brushed 304 over 50 mm polyurethane insulation. Gaskets are FDA-grade EPDM, silicone on request. The dimple jacket is rated 1.5 bar working pressure with 1.5 inch tri-clamp glycol connections, sized for roughly 3.5 m² of cooling area at this volume.

Standard fittings cover a racking arm, sample valve, RTD thermowell, CIP spray ball and level tube. Heights and nozzle positions are agreed with you before drawings are released, because a tank that blocks a catwalk or a hose run is a problem nobody wants to fix on site.

Can the tank run under pressure? The jacket is rated 1.5 bar for glycol. The body works at atmospheric pressure with a relief valve or airlock. For gas sparging or push transfers, we build a separately rated design.

How many tanks for a 20 ton harvest? At 5 KL per lot, most wineries plan four to six fermenters so picks can be staggered and one tank stays free for racking.

Do you offer 316L on the whole tank? We do, though for most red programs 304 with 316L on contact surfaces is the practical choice on cost and lead time.

Send your batch size, grape variety, number of tanks and available ceiling height. We can size the volume, cooling area and fitting layout for your cellar before you commit to anything.