Removing Pickle Smell From Bucket?

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galexior

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Greetings!

I work in a Denny's, and we get our pickles in big 5 gallon buckets, with those nice tight sealing lids (complete with a rubber gasket!). So ive been thinking. If i could remove the residual pickle smell, i could have an unlimited number of 5 gallon fermentation buckets! (so long as i keep working there, or remain friends with the people there...)

So, how would you recommend i go about removing the pickle smell? i was thinking a bleach water solution and scrubbing it with a soft scrubby pad, the green ones, that wouldnt scratch the plastic, then filling it up and letting it sit for a few days. a few good rinses afterwards should leave a clean bucket, right?
 
A freind of mine tried to brew beer in a pickle bucket from a restaraunt...it did not turn out as he hoped....And he never managed to get the smell out of the bucket.

Unless maybe you want to do a "Pickle Porter"?

That being said, I would be concerned about scratches and such. Unless you guys prep the whole 5 gallon bucket at once (I am assuming they come whole and you quarter them) you run the risk that a cook or prepcook may scratch the saide uf the bucket removing pickles.

You are better off just getting a fresh clean bucket if you are just starting out.
 
well, The bucket is free of scratches, we get pickle chips, so there is no cutting, all we do it remove them and close the lid. ill give it a shot and ill let you know.
 
im not a very smart person, can i buy another word? i dont understand. haha
 
I don't imagine pickles and hops would mingle well together. But hey, I'll try anything once. If you used some smoked barley, you could have a smoked pickle porter. Nothing says yum quite like bacon and humiliated cucumbers.
 
Use a different topping bucket. Sysco and other food distributors sell all sorts of things in buckets. Wander around your walk in cooler and see what else comes in a topping bucket. For example, we go through a lot of strawberry topping in our restaurant, and it comes in 10 gallon buckets (with lids). Frosting buckets from bakeries & grocery stores also go a long way.
 
I have read that a mixture salt and lemon juice can help remove pickle smell from pickle jars and suck. I have successfully removed the smell from a jar lid before by leaving it outside in the hot sun for a few days. This should work for the bucket as well but I don't really know how long it would take.
 
well, i have it full of bleach water right now. ill let it sit the weekend then ill dump it and rinse it until my landlord sees the water bill... (i dont pay that part... hehehe)
 
I am surprised Revvy hasn't chimed in yet with a million links proving it's impossible to remove the pickles from those buckets. At least according to Revvy, many people have tried to remove that smell over the years, all unsuccessfully.

I think you can maybe do it eventually, if you make a dozen batches in it, and you are willing to throw away the ones you can't drink. My reasoning is that I had a big-ass jar that I have used for yeast rinsing, which originally was a pickle jar. The jar itself is glass, and was completely odor-free after the first wash/rinse, but the lid on the other hand took a few time of processing yeast leftovers before the smell went away. It DID eventually go away, but it sure took a while.
 
Oxyclean and hot water? I have used the lids but they still smell faintly like pickles but don't touch the beer much. The buckets I haven't tried.
 
I would try the following process
1. Bleach solution (~4 or 5 hrs)
2. Vinegar solution (~3 hrs)
3. Oxyclean soak (over night)
4. Direct sunlight (~6-8 hrs)
5. StarSan (over night)

I did this for a used keg I got and most of the odd odor came out. Obviously, I shortened my bleach solution time since SS and bleach don't like each other a lot but plastic and bleach don't mind each other at all.
 
You can't get rid of the smell. I bought a pickle bucket from Firehouse Subs to store my walnut media for brass tumbling in. I've used it for over two years and it still smells of pickles.
 
This looked like the most recent thread regarding use of a pickle bucket for a fermenter and wanted to chime in. I was given 5 pickle buckets and soaked them all in bleach vinegar for two weeks, 2 weeks with oxyclean, and a week with starsan sitting in the sun the whole time. Then brewed several batches in each.

I wish I had labeled the buckets so I knew which were the worst offenders but those buckets are still making pickle flavored beer to varying degrees however I also used one of the buckets to make a kit black raspberry merlot and with a contact time of 4 weeks you can't taste the pickle in the wine once bottled. I have many bottles whose cap labels now start with P for pickle. Surprisingly the Marzen lagered for 7 weeks wasn't the worst offender and was kegged and consumed in a day.

I'm stubborn and had a hard time believe that 3 months of leaching in various beers and cleaners wouldn't get the pickle out. My recommendation is to spend the 4 bucks for a bucket and lid from home depot, soak that in some bleach and move on with life.

Luckily I had several PP, PTFE, and glass carboys running along side so at least some of the beer was picklefree. I'm currently letting some C3C sit in glass and the best pickle bucket for a few weeks to do a side by side to prove I'm not crazy.
 
Hey did you ever get the pickle smell out of it? What did it take? How did it go? I've got some pickle buckets... Thanks
 
By the large number of stories about ever-smelling buckets, I don't believe it's possible, dude... :(
 

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