Tank sizing comes before tank design

A tank list usually grows one vintage at a time. By the fourth year a winery owns three jacket styles, two valve standards, and no reliable drawings. We build 316L red wine fermenting tanks from 6 KL to 12000 L, and the first decision is batch size — not whatever happens to be in the shop that month.

Shell, jacket, and finish

Product contact surfaces are 316L, typically 3 mm on the shell and heavier at the cone where the must weight concentrates. Outer shell and cooling jacket run in 304. Interior welds are ground flush, then pickled and passivated. A mechanical polish to Ra ≤ 0.8 µm is available when the fruit is headed for long barrel aging and color stability matters. Manways use a single-piece profile gasket rather than a spliced ring, which is where most slow leaks start.

Why the wall is doubled

Red fermentation throws heat fast, and cap management only works if you can pull temperature down within hours, not days. Glycol at −5 to −2 °C circulates through a dimple or channel jacket covering 60–80 % of the shell. A 6 KL tank with a small jacket will hold 26 °C in a cool cellar; the same tank in a 32 °C crush pad environment needs more surface area, and a 12000 L unit needs a jacket split into zones so you can cool the top without over-chilling the cone. Jackets are hydro-tested before insulation, and every unit ships with a safety valve sized to the jacket volume.

Configuration that wineries actually order

Top or side manway, racking arm, sample valve, thermowell, CIP spray ball, and butterfly valves to DIN 11851 or tri-clamp. Custom crush facilities often want identical fittings across all sizes so cellar staff do not need adapters at 2 a.m.

Questions we get before the PO

Can one tank do red and white? Yes, if the jacket area is sized for the faster red ferment and the tank has a cooling zone near the cone.

How much jacket area? Roughly 1.5–2 m² per 10 hL for reds in a warm cellar. Give us your ambient temperature and target drop time and we will calculate it.

Do you supply the chiller? We can, but sizing it to the whole tank farm rather than one tank is usually cheaper.

Tell us your batch size, wine type, number of fermentation tanks and available space. We can recommend the tank volume, cooling area and configuration for your winery.