HLT to Barrell, MLT from Keggle to Kettle

[brewindruid]

My Sculpture, for the moment, consists of three barrells fit with castors, on top of which are my three burners 1KAB6, 2sq14s. My current MLT is a Keggle, while the other two vessels are 15g SS kettles. I am not nuts about the Keggle...dead space is huge, and the possiblility of scorching bugs me. I have been considering going to Bubba's Barrells for a stainless Barrell as a replacement for the HLT, bumpiing the keggle and refitting a kettle as a MLT.
Any thoughts and input welcome, is this fundage well spent or just the ususal refit bug? Would the sq be up to the barrell challange? Any thoughts on how long I could store filtered water in the SS HLT?

Cheers
Scott

[Ozwald]

Never heard of Bubba's before this but after checking them out I don't think they give any advantage over a converted keg. The deadspace is actually going to be larger. They don't look like a bad product though.

As for water storage....

It depends.

... on your water. RO/distilled is going to leech from the stainless. Harder water won't have much of an issue, but you may run into some staining... but that's what BKF is for. It still may leech to some extent. It just depends. They make water bottles from stainless as well, but those aren't intended for long term storage. A few days isn't going to be a problem for most water, but I wouldn't go weeks on end. I've left charcoal filtered tap water (which was pretty soft) in a converted keg for 6 days without any noticeable issues before. YMMV.

[brewindruid]

Hey Lee.
Hope all is well with you. Suppose you're right about the deadspace in the bbl, wouldn't have thought of that till I pulled the trigger, then be pissed about it.
GSO has pretty good, and consistant water, fairly soft. I carbon filter. Max storage would be around the 7 day mark. Deadspace in the bbl wouldn't be an issue, Deadspace in my kettles is only 1g. Would the 1.2g in the keggle really act as more of a buffer against scorching? Recirc is moving the whole volume, I was worried about a stagnant area below pickup. No issues as of yet, but fixing something that ain't realy broken seems to be an obssesion.