Free Primary Fementers
January 5th, 2006 | 
Author: Most home winemakers use food grade plastic pails for primary fermentation. The ones that are available at the winemaking store I frequent are all 23 litre pails. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a variety of sizes for your primary fermentation vessels?
Well, I mentioned this to my ex-wife who is a food service supervisor at a cafeteria. She told me that many of her food deliveries were in food grade plastic pails which came in a variety of sizes. Once the food was empty, the pails would end up in the recycling blue box. I asked her if she would set aside some for me, and now I’ve got several pails that are about 3 gallon capacity, some 2 gallons, and a couple that are just over 1 gallon in capacity.
These are great for those batches of wine that you’re making in smaller quantities. If you know anyone in the food service industy, you might want to ask them if they get food deliveries in pails, and if so, if they could put some aside for you.
Make sure you have them save the lids as well.
I wonder if grocery stores might have spare plastic pails as well that they might keep for you instead of putting out to the trash or recycling curb.
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Hi Ian,
Great idea!!! Here’s another, I use the plastic 5 gallon water cooler jugs as temporary carboys. They are great for racking the wine a second time and leaving it there for a month or so.
Thanks, Ben. I have heard so many opposing opinions on using water cooler jugs, that I’ve not tried it myself thus far. One of the things I’ve heard is that they tend to get little scratch marks in the surface when being brush cleaned, and later, these scratches will make them even more difficult to sanitize (more surface area for bacteria to hide).
I do have three spare water cooler jugs; maybe I should just try them sometime during one of those times when I’m running out of spare carboys. But you’ve never had a problem, huh? That’s interesting to know, and will encourage me to give them a try
I agree w/ both of you.
If you batch size is 19 litres, and not 23 they work great . . . once.
I’d not recommend them for multiple uses. Ian, the scaped plastic phoebia is real. Studies (I don’t have them on me know) have shown that the lightest of carboy brushes will scrape the inside of _any_ plastic container and provide a haven for bacteria.
Another aspect of that same study was that the stronger your sanitizing solution the greater the chances of bacteria forming bunches, similar to ants crossing a river.
The downsided of this is that the bacteria in the inside of the bunch is protected from the effects of the sanitizing solutions. This is another good reason not to be hasy when sanitizing. Use the recommended dosage and time frame.
Cheers,
lance
Right then, and when I sober up I might be able to spell.
I of course meant “your batch size”. “scraped plastic phoebia” and “not to be hasty”.
Sigh,
lance