You guys ever use one of these fermenters

[freddyk]

Great thread.

I am new to brewing but I want to start at 10 gallon batches. My local brew store, F H Steinbart in Portland, sold me one of these things for $10 bucks so I figured I could not loose. Are there any modifications that need to be made or is it as simple as putting a stopper and air lock on the larger of the two holes at the top? The picture above has an air lock off to the left. Is it just placed there or did you drill a new hole there for some reason?

I figure I will just have to place it up high enough so that I can just siphon the goods to my corny kegs. It seems like a cheep solution because splitting 10 gallons into two carboys seems inefficient somehow.

[Blowmax10]

Great thread.

I am new to brewing but I want to start at 10 gallon batches. My local brew store, F H Steinbart in Portland, sold me one of these things for $10 bucks so I figured I could not loose. Are there any modifications that need to be made or is it as simple as putting a stopper and air lock on the larger of the two holes at the top? The picture above has an air lock off to the left. Is it just placed there or did you drill a new hole there for some reason?

I figure I will just have to place it up high enough so that I can just siphon the goods to my corny kegs. It seems like a cheep solution because splitting 10 gallons into two carboys seems inefficient somehow.

on the one that I have drilling the hole for the stopper severed two purposes

1 was the stopper

and 2 was there was no way to get all the fluid out of it with the two holes that it already had

like I said it was used - and was not meant as a fermenter, yours might be different

[yodalegomaster]

I have 6 of these, I use them all the time. They work great as I just use a tall racking cane. I did build a stopper with a hole to add an air lock. I have 3 fermenters in long term storage, they don't seem to add a lot of oxygen to the long term beers, probably because of the wall thickness and the gadget in the openings. They also Stack quite nicely, if you can lift them. All in all they work great for what I need.

PS: I bought them at a local packaging company, the only problem with dealing with them is they have a 100.00 min order. So, my order of 6 brought me over the 100.00 level so it was about $18.00 each.

[freddyk]

Thanks Blowmax10. I think I am going to try that. I was wondering how I would find the right sized stopper for one of the existing holes. If I drill a new one with a hole saw it will solve the problem. I am going to give it a shot.

[Brewgyver]

In case you haven't figured it out yet, these containers are also used for bulk LME. My LHBS get's all it's LME in these, and he gives them away freee when empty. The catch in this case is getting all the LME out. A couple years ago we were forced to move our Club summper campout location at the last minute due to a wildfire. The backup location had no water, so we hauled four of these filled with water with us. To get rid of as much residual extract as possible, I filled them with ~160 F water, let them set a while, drained and repeated. Also, the day before leaving, gave them a soak/rinse with Saniclean. This left them fairly flavor and odor free.

Of course, another way to get the LME out might be to add boiling water, roll them around to dissolve the extract, let it cool and throw in a pack of Safale!

As long as they haven't previously contained something toxic, they should be OK for fermenting. But I must admit, despite the fact that I have 3 in my garage, I've never used them for that purpose, just can't bring myself to risk that much beer!

Let us know how it goes!

[freddyk]

Thanks Brewgyver. I have been wondering how to go about cleaning it and those ideas are great. I think I am going to clean the hell out of it and do two batches of beer. One batch for carboys and one for the barrel and see how it goes.

[tavish2]

+ 1 on most homebrew stores giving them away for free. I dont see any issues with using them as a fermenter. I know a lot of local wineguys use these for fermenters w/o issue.

[Petedadink]

I have some of these that I get free from time to time as well. As a fermenter Ive never used. I run my chiller water into them for cleaning as well as for the plants.