Bottling bucket as second fermenter

I've just brewed my first batch of beer and I presently don't have a secondary fermenter. Would it be possible to rack to the bottiling bucket let it sit for another week and then bottle it?

That should work fine. The only issue will be if you use that bucket for bottling it will be difficult (or impossible) to stir in your priming sugar without stirring up the sediment.

In the future, you could use the bottling bucket as the primary and then use your current primary fermenter as the secondary. That way when you bottle you could rack again into your bottling bucket and stir in the priming sugar while leaving the secondary sediment behind.

I forgot about the priming sugar! Thanks for the bottling-primary-bottling idea, I'll try that next time.

What I would do in this particular case is let it sit in the primary for 10 days or so, and then go ahead and bottle using your bottling bucket. Quite a bit of the sediment will drop out in 10 days, and your beer will taste great.

I had the same problem and I just went to my LHBS and bought another spigot and installed it in my primary after I racked to my bottling bucket. So now I have two buckets with spigots.

Passload said:

I had the same problem and I just went to my LHBS and bought another spigot and installed it in my primary after I racked to my bottling bucket. So now I have two buckets with spigots.

Click to expand...

Or just purchase a secondary fermenter.....

Sorry, not trying to be a wise ars

anthrobe said:

Or just purchase a secondary fermenter.....

Click to expand...

$1.50 vs $7.00 and I dont have to use a racking cane. But this is what I do.

My only concern in this would be sanitizing. I am fairly obsessive about it - I always disassemble my tap and thoroughly clean and sanitize it before allowing any brew to pass through it. How is tap sanitizing dealt with when using the brew tank as a secondary?

Disassembling and cleaning the tap is a good idea. Once it is replaced the only part exposed to the environment is the output nozzle as the ball valve seals the rest off. It's fairly simple to swab the output nozzle with a no-rinse sanitizer before racking, which is what I do when using my bottling bucket as a primary.