5 Gallon Beverage Container Carbonation

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Semsem

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Okay, so I was just in my basement, kind of a mess, and just happened upon something I forgot I had...a 5 gallon insulated beverage container/water cooler. It's cylindrical, plastic, screw on lid, handles, and has a fast flow faucet.

This raised an interesting question, one I need a little help with.

If you, say, went through the beer making process and were at the bottle carbing stage, and had 5 gallons, could one put it in the beverage container, add the priming sugar and yeast, seal it up (maybe put a little duct tape around the screw lid to make sure it's air tight), and let it sit and carb up...would one then be able to use the fast flow faucet properly to extract the beer from the container? Or would there be problems with the carbonation in the faucet?

And...how long would the carbonation last in such a configuration? Longer than it would once you'd open and reseal a bottle? Or would one be wise in that instance to consume the beer relatively soon after starting to siphon off the beer via the faucet?
 
If you can keep it sealed under pressure while it carbonates, then sure. If it's like a regular water cooler, I doubt it.

Got a picture or a link to it?
 
I'm doubtful, myself, but if you want you can pressure test it first. Just put five gallons of lukewarm water in it with 1-2 cups of table sugar and some bread yeast. That sould get you to the pressure of overcarbed beer so if it can handle that, it should be able to handle properly carbonated beer. The bread yeast and table sugar should do their thing a lot faster and cheaper than beer yeast and bottling sugar and if it fails, at least you haven't wasted beer.
 
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