Why beer fermentation tanks always stand vertically and not horizontally?!
Why beer fermentation tanks always stand vertically and not horizontally?
Answers:
It's for efficiency of space and cost of the container. To manufacture a tank where the brewer needs to get in and out of it for checking the fermentation and to sanitize it between batches, the vertical arrangement works much better. It's easer to make a lid for a flat surface than for a curved surface (as it would be if the tank were on its side). It's also to gauge the volume of the contents by simply looking at how full it is...it's directly proportional to the depth in the tank. If the tank is sideways, there isn't a direct correlation between the depth and the volume as there is with a vertical tank.
Besides, a lot of breweries have only so much room for fermenters (particularly micro-breweries). If you want to get a bigger fermenter into the same space, you have to make it taller. If you start out with vertical fermenters, all your piping will already be properly oriented and all you'd have to do is extend upward.