25 Gallon Build Advice

[dordelli]

So I had a buddy over this weekend and walked him thru a 5 Gallon All grain Batch of Stout on my gravity based 3 tier wood stand, he loved it and wants me to help him build a system, but a much bigger one, like 25gals. He has aspirations to one day open a small brewery, so whatever we build for him, would be great if it mimics (on a smaller scale) the process we would follow on a 3 or 5 bbl system. Any advice, I've read a little about herms vs rims, which one would be more appropriate to control mash temps? He would ultimately keep this system to do smaller specialty batches and for recipe testing. He'd prefer natural gas and has a sufficient space in his garage for a big setup and possibly even a bar for "product testing".