Homebrewing - Beer, Mead, Wine, Cider

There is less chance of flavour transfer from the stainless steel itself than from plastic, as long as you remove all residue between batches properly. Gaskets may hold some but that's a different story.

I used starsan to sanitize a 30L stainless steel fermenter (a basic one, not conical, basically a huge pot with a lid and a tap - bought from Braumeister I believe) and the only issue I ran into was the plastic bits falling off the lid, though that may have been mechanical failure. I did however scratch it with a rough non-scratch sponge (as somebody else said in this thread).

I did have a glass 20L carboy shatter by itself only sitting in a midldy cold room.

Stupid question from a mead apprentice - why not just bottle as soon as it clears and then let it do its thing in the bottle?