will it boil over?

I'm planning on making 4 gallons of wine in a 4 1/4 gallon bucket I scored for free at a bakery. My question is; When it ferments, will it boil over through the air lock due to limited space?

Depends on the strain of yeast you use. Montrachet hardly foams up at all, but K1-V116 will blow the airlock off if you let it. You can learn more about strains of wine yeast here: Winemaking: Strains of Wine Yeast Regards, GF.

1/2 gallon of headspace might not be enough. It depends on the recipe, as well as the yeast. I cover my primary with a clean cloth, and don't use an airlock until it goes into secondary. What do you have for a vessel for secondary, though? I've seen a ton of 3 gallon carboys, but never a four gallon carboy. If you only have a 3 gallon carboy, you could make 3 gallons of wine and just save the rest of the ingredients for next time.

YooperBrew said:

1/2 gallon of headspace might not be enough. It depends on the recipe, as well as the yeast. I cover my primary with a clean cloth, and don't use an airlock until it goes into secondary. What do you have for a vessel for secondary, though? I've seen a ton of 3 gallon carboys, but never a four gallon carboy. If you only have a 3 gallon carboy, you could make 3 gallons of wine and just save the rest of the ingredients for next time.

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I was figuring to rack it to another bucket I scored from the bakery. Does it have to be racked to glass?

Papinquack said:

I was figuring to rack it to another bucket I scored from the bakery. Does it have to be racked to glass?

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What was stored in the bucket when you got it from the bakery?

It held icing. The buckets are #2 recycling code which is great, unfortunately they are only 4 1/4 gallon.

Papinquack said:

It held icing. The buckets are #2 recycling code which is great, unfortunately they are only 4 1/4 gallon.

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As long as the bucket is made of food grade plastic and you can install a bung and airlock on the lid to keep air out. I don't really care to use plastic as a secondary, but that's just me.

YooperBrew posted ...

I've seen a ton of 3 gallon carboys, but never a four gallon carboy.

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Me either until a couple of days ago!

A supermarket near me is a distributor of ShurFine products. After a couple of requests by customers, they recently added bottled water in carboys, to their inventory.

Rather than the normal 3 and 5 gallon sized carboys, they offer 4 gallon carboys of water. The plastic is #1 PET, and is clear instead of tinted blue.

The cost is $7.99US plus tax, and they are no deposit/no return!

I picked one up just because of the odd size. I've come to realize that when making country wines, you are never in control of the quanity of the fruits you may find, so the more varied the sizes of your fermentors, the more flexible a winemaker you can be.

Pogo

I am new to winemaking. I feel its important to rack into a glass secondary. I would have a hard time racking the wine if it wasn't in glass and I am sure I would suck up gunk from the bottom if I couldn't see through the container.
Just my opinion.

The problem with secondary isn't glass vs. plastic- it's headspace. If you look at a carboy, you can see that if you fill it to within an inch or two of the bung, you have almost no headspace, and the space that is there is about an inch across. That means there will be very little exposure to oxygen. Look at the bucket- it's probably 12-14 inches across. That means that you'll have that much oxygen exposure, and it secondary, that is very bad for your wine. Even in a carboy, you top up above the neck as to minimize the headspace.

I would never, ever, secondary in a bucket. But I ALWAYS do primary in one. If you've ever tasted oxidized wine (think sherry), you'd never secondary in anything but a carboy with minimal headspace. Wine is too time consuming and expensive to risk by using an inexpensive bucket, when you could find a carboy for $20. (Or even a plastic water jug, which is still not ideal due to oxygen permeability, but it's better than all that headspace in a bucket).

Yes - very good points.

I decided to save the 4 1/4 bakery bucket to ferment smaller batches of wine. I went to the paint department at the local home depot and bought a brand new calibrated 5 gal. #2 recycle rated bucket and lid, (sold seperatly) total was about $10.00 That will give me enough head space to ferment with out boil overs. I'm going to drill hole in the lid tommorrow and place the .50 cent grommet in it. I've also decided to go buy a 5 gal. carboy to rack it into. It will work out pretty good. I'm a beer drinker and the extra carboy once wine is done frees me up to build my stash...:rockin: