Recently bought a new Minibrew 6.5 Gallon Conical from Hobby Beverage Equipment. It came with a 3/4" brass bottom dump valve and a 1/2" brass racking port valve. The 3/4" valve had a strong petroleum odor right out of the box. Soaked the valve for 24 hours in PBW which knocked down most of the petroleum odor but not all. The odor is coming from inside of the valve. I'm not going to take a chance on putting this valve in contact with my brew. The question now is what do I replace it with?
If you have a Blichmann 7 gal Fermenator, what size is the bottom dump valve? In the pictures it looks like their 1/2" 3 piece stainless. If so, is that size big enough for the purpose? I believe the MoreBeer conical touts a 1 1/2" butterfly valve.
Kind of secondary to all this is my questionable fixation with stainless steel. Anybody else have a phobia with brass? I think the Blichmann 3 piece stainless valves are sweet, but to use it on my conical for a bottom dump I would have to install a 3/4" to 1/2" reducer and then I wonder if the valve is big enough to function as a dump. Any thoughts?