It's butt welded. No, I haven't put any beer in it, yet. I've barely brewed at all this year!
I am thinking of trying something simular and found your thread Yuri! I want to build a 15+ conical with bottom dump too!
So have you got a batch in it yet?
Some of you may remember my last DIY conical thread. The old design worked great, but there really wasn't a practical way to get it to hold pressure (for transferring the contents without a pump or gravity). Well, here's the solution!
Parts:
1/2 bbl keg (thanks again, Boston!)
TMS Conical Hopper (21 gal)
Corny lid
Corny post fitting
Gas-in post
Ball valve/fitting for dump/transfer (not shown in this post)
Assemble as shown below. The keg is upside down because the bottom of the keg had no ridges to interrupt the Corny lid seal. I've pressure tested it to 10 psi with no issues at all. The total volume is 18 gallons.
I'm going to use the rest of the TMS hopper to make a cooling jacket around the straight sides of the keg. My old kegerator will serve as the glycol chiller.
Expect progress to be painfully slow (as has been the case with most of my projects over the past year). I've gotten pretty busy! I promise to keep the thread updated as the project unfolds.
I've gotten a little more done. The jacket makes it look a little like a rocket ship from a bad 60's movie. It needs one more major piece to seal up the jacket, but you probably get the idea now.
After doing a little math on the volume of glycol required for that hefty jacket and resulting cooling system, I decided to do something different. I think I have it figured out, but I'm not quite done ironing out the details. For now, here's what it looks like:
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