Fermenter HELP!

Hey all.

I'm in the middle of brewing my first batch and I have a question.

Can I use a 5 gallon Ale Pail for my primary fermenter?

in the "How to Brew" book by John Palmer it says to use a 6.5 gallon. I dont have one.

I have a 5 gallon Ale Pail, a 5 gallon glass carboy, and a 6.5 gallon bottling bucket.

I just got done sanitizing the 5 gallon Ale Pail. Can I use this?

Which should I use?

Help! my wort is boiling!

are you sure the ale pail is 5 gallons? i'm pretty sure those are 6 or 6.5... is there plenty of headspace above the '5 gallon' line? if it is in fact 5 gallons, just use it and rig up a blowoff tube.

since you have a secondary, you should be able to use the bottling bucket as a primary fermenter. after primary, you rack to carbot (could use the spigot on the bottling bucket). Rack back into that cleaned bucket on bottling day.

If you're planning on using the secondary, there's no reason why you can't use the 6.5 gallon bottling bucket as well. You can use the bottling bucket as the primary, siphon into the secondary in a week or two, and then siphon back into the bottling bucket for bottling. As android said, if you're going to use the 5 gallon bucket, you'll probably want to use a blow off tube to ensure your lid/airlock don't blow off, painting your ceiling with wort!

Sorry guys! This is my FIRST batch of beer ever in my life and in my complete moronic nervous state, I did not realize that in fact the Ale Pail is more like 6 or 6.5 gallons.

It threw me off because the Ale Pail only has the measurements on the side going up to 5 gallons! haha!

eon said:

Sorry guys! This is my FIRST batch of beer ever in my life and in my complete moronic nervous state, I did not realize that in fact the Ale Pail is more like 6 or 6.5 gallons.

It threw mw off because the Ale Pail only has the measurements on the side going up to 5 gallons! haha!

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So...really?!?!? I'm waiting for your next thread:

HELP, EMERGENCY! - I WANT TO DRINK MY 12OZ BOTTLE OF HOMEBREW, BUT ONLY HAVE A 16OZ GLASS!!!

Sorry, sorry, I kid, all in good fun. I'm glad you solved your pr.., your ppprrr..., your (MUST STOP LAUGHING), your problem!

Well, my wort is in the primary fermenter now. Had a little accident though. While I was putting on the airlock, some water/vodka solution came out of the airlock and went into the wort. Hope all is well.

I'm also concerned about a lot of other things. If anyone wants to private message me I have LOTS of questions. Or I can just post the questions here.

eon said:

Well, my wort is in the primary fermenter now. Had a little accident though. While I was putting on the airlock, some water/vodka solution came out of the airlock and went into the wort. Hope all is well.

I'm also concerned about a lot of other things. If anyone wants to private message me I have LOTS of questions. Or I can just post the questions here.

Click to expand...

Your wort should be fine. I would just use all vodka in the airlock though. Go ahead and post questions on this site, but first do a search to see if they haven't already been answered before. The SEARCH field is in the beer foam at the top right of this page.