2 buckets or ??

alright, so I stepped up to brewing 10 gallon batches by purchasing a 60 quart kettle. Now I need a bigger fermenter. i guess i can use 2 plastic brew buckets, but i'm looking for other ideas. I'm going today to look at some surplus food grade barrels. They would need to fit in my keezer fermentation chamber though. any ideas ??

I've done eight gallon batches in two 5 gallon corny kegs.

I have two 10 gallon corny kegs that I plan to start fermenting in once I can replace the posts on them. That should be good for 16 gallon batches (eight in each).

But surplus food grade barrels sounds good, provided they're 12-15ish gallons

I do 10 gallon batches all the time. Two 6 gallon carboys fit just find in my old ferm fridge.

I really like splitting my batches up as it gives me an opportunity to do a true head to head comparison of yeast strains, dry hopping techniques, etc. The smaller fermenters are also easier to move and make it easier to control temperatures. I can easily fit 4 carboys in my fermentation fridge for 2 ten gal batches at a time.

That being said, 1/2 bbl sanke kegs make great fermenters for 10-12 gal batches. They allow pressurized fermentation, don't allow any light in, and you can make pressurized transfers after fermentation is complete. A cheaper alternative would be HDPE drums. My local craigslist usually has listings for drums of all sizes pretty cheap. The 15 gal ones usually go for about $10 each. Just make sure you know what it was previously used for (preferably food).

Here's some near you, but it looks like the smallest they have is 20 gal.

Food grade barrels.

yep,just got back from there. I picked up a couple of 15" x 24 " heavy plastic Iodine barrels. each has 2 'Bungs" like the 55 gallon barrels do and they supposedly hold 15 gallons. 1 will fit perfect in my converted chest freezer/fermentation chamber, and I can just rack it over to 2 cornies when the fermentation is done

2 buckets if you plan on moving the fermenters around. large batches get heavy quick unless you are a big strong dude.