Life Latch Fermintation Bucket

Got a deal on 3 of these and so I figured why not turn it into a fermentation bucket?

1/2" hole drilled with a step bit in order to add the rubber grommet for the airlock.

Fermenting an IPA that I did today. I will share the results of the new bucket when we get a little further into this experiment.

IPA fermenting away nicely now. Magic Bubbles coming out the airlock which means these are staying air tight.

If the airlock clogs that will turn in to a fountain, so instead of the whole lid blowing you will have a stream of foam and yeast. Be sure to take pictures.

If that happens I certainly will. I suspect with the gravity beers I brew that's not going to happen, also I don't believe the Ale Pal would fair much better as that kind of pressure, while high is unlikely to fully unseat the snap on lid which means you'd have just as big of a mess.

Keithww said:

If the airlock clogs that will turn in to a fountain, so instead of the whole lid blowing you will have a stream of foam and yeast. Be sure to take pictures.

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IPA moved to secondary. All looks well.

Where'd ya pick those up on the cheap? Look good for grain storage, too.

I ordered them online from Baytec Containers. They were $47.95 for 3 with free shipping so about $16 bucks a piece. I didn't think that was bad consider the Ale Pale's are about that at my local home brew store.

http://www.bayteccontainers.com/65galsctoppa.html

I recently found some CurTec 13 gallon on eBay that I'm planning to use for grain storage. They were $20 + shipping. I can dig up the link if you want.

If you are ordering from Baytec, throw in a few Gamma lids, I love having color coded lids to store my grain.

Keithww said:

If you are ordering from Baytec, throw in a few Gamma lids, I love having color coded lids to store my grain.

Click to expand...

I ordered my three with white lids but they have Red and Blue as well.

So I've been using these buckets for some time now and I have a couple of comments to share. These are at times hard to seal, almost as if they are miss threading when closing. This hasn't caused any issues for me beer wise but I was a little surprised when after a few days I had no apparent bubbles coming out of the airlock. To my surprise I had a hearty amount of krausen when I took the lid off. Tightening the lid corrected the issue and I had almost immediate activity.

I have had issues with airlocks clogging but I have caught them before it turned into a fountain. I have since switched to a blow off tube.

Overall I am not totally satisfied with the performance of these buckets but still believe they are better then the Ale Pal.

I have a handful of Curtec buckets that I'm planning to test out and will create a new thread to share the results.

Ultimately I would love to have a conical fermentor and will likely go in that direction eventually as funds allow.