Fermentation buckets: pros and cons

The India Pale Ale is fermenting happily in one of the new fermentation buckets. Since the buckets hold 32 liters there is quite a bit of head space in there, so I do not have to worry too much about the fermentation overflowing.

After having tried one of these fermentation buckets I have found a few things that are good and bad about them:

Pros:

• Easier to clean as one can reach into them by opening the lid. One has to be a little careful so that it does not pick up any scratches. A soft non-scratching cloth is needed.
• The bucket has a flat top which means that one can stack them on top of each other saving a little space while fermenting. On the other hand this also means that the cat can sleep there.
• The stackability is even more useful when storing them between use. Four buckets take up just as little space as one of them do.

Cons:

• A bucket does not fit very well in my kegerator. The old fermentation tanks was just a little wider that a cornelius keg, so I could fit one of them in the fridge with three cornelius kegs. Not so with the new fermentation buckets. From what I can gather there is not room for any kegs together with a bucket. I'll have to try and find one of the old type, so that I can ferment my lagers in it.
• It is harder to oxygenate the wort as one cannot vigorously shake the bucket. With the old tanks I could just close them with a lid and shake hell out of them. Pouring the wort from the siphon from a height did seem to work nicely, but it is not perfect. I'll have to look into getting hold of an aquarium pump and an oxygenation stone.

Anything else?

New fermentation buckets

New fermenters have been acquired. I ended up with four 32 liter fermentation buckets. They cost me 80 NOK each. I really had thought that I should get hold of the same kind of fermenters that I had earlier, but the LHBS did not have any. He didn't have any glass carboys either, so I had to do with these.

The buckets have markings going up to 27 liters, but by extrapolating I estimate that they will hold at least five more liters. The old carboys were only 28 liters. Given that I make 25 liters of wort at a time they did not have much head space. For vigorous fermentations that's certainly a bit tight. The recent weissbier and the imperial porter did both cause a big mess as the carboys overflowed. That has happened a lot of times earlier also.


This is the imperial porter. The weissbier was even more vigorous and I lost almost three liters of beer this way. With the new buckets I should be able avoid this, saving both beer and not having to clean up the mess.

The buckets should be easier to clean as they are much more accessible. With the old carboys I had to use a carboy brush, which worked reasonably well once I had soaked the carboys in washing soda (sodium carbonate) overnight. Given the better accessibility I would think that they would more easily pick up scratches. We'll see.

I have another five such buckets which I use to soak and clean equipment and bottles in. They have been treated pretty roughly, so they are full of scratches and cannot be used as fermentors. As you can see on the above photo I have marked the buckets so that I do not mix them up.

To be honest I really do want to upgrade to a couple of 55 liter Blichmann Fermenators, but because of space constraints I have to wait until I have somewhere to put them. There just isn't anywhere to place them in our current apartment. Someday maybe...

Pictures: Beers fermenting

The Christmas beer and the wit started fermenting pretty fast. I was a bit worried about the lager yeast as it was very quiet and didn't seem to be alive, but not so. The first bubbles in the fermenation lock came after about 24 hours. So the conclusion is that the yeast spends quite a bit of time reproducing before starting off with a more active fermentation.

The wit was alive after just a few hours. As you can see from the picture below it got off to a rather violent fermentation. This happens with certain yeast strains. It keeps building up until the head reaches the top of the fermenter before it comes bursting out, either through the fermentation lock or through the cap. The fermenter is 30 liters, so the headspace is only 5 liters, not much really. I usually leave the cap open and loose, to avoid that something unfortunate should happen. I would hate to see the fermenter clog and then explode, so would my wife I think. Clogging would only happen when there are sizeable particles, like orange peel, in the fermenting beer. It is more a theoretical possibility, but I'd rather be too careful.


The two beers have now fermented for five days, but I plan to let them go on for a little while more before kegging. Usually I let them sit for anywhere between one and three weeks, depending on me being prepared to keg and whether the final gravity has been reached.


The lager is fermenting in my temperature controlled fridge which I keep at a temperature of between 9.5 and 10.5C (9.7C when the picture was taken). The white thermostat that you see to the right can be configured with a temperature range in which it keeps the fridge. From the thermostat there is a small external sensor cord that runs into the fridge.


The wit is fermenting at room temperature, which have been in the range between 20 to 21C the first five days. This is perhaps a tad too high, but the yeast specifications seems to indicate that this is just fine. We'll see. Other wits I've made have been fermenting at 19C.