No harm in asking

At the supermarket today as I walked past the bakery I noticed a stack of empty plastic pails. I asked the young lady emptying trash cans in the back if I could have one. She went into a back room and came out with a stack of three 2-gallon pails and a 2.5 gallon pail, with lids.

Of course, now I'm trying to think of what to make in them, but the house smells like cake frosting and it's interfering with the process. I guess I better scrub these things out first.

Dave

Small batch mead? Apfelwein? Both those would work in those sizes easily.

Oh, a scoop of oxyclean in hot water will fix them right up! The only ones I wouldn't use are pickle buckets. Otherwise, bakery buckets are the best. Usually, cake frosting and peanut butter come in those buckets. Sometimes strawberry preserves, so the bucket actually smells really good!

I make wine all the time in buckets as a primary. If you want to do three gallon batches or less, those buckets are perfect. I have a selection of 3 gallon carboys and 1 gallon jugs, so I make small batches of wine or mead all of the time. I use the buckets (with the lid on loosely or just a towel covering it) for primary, then use the jugs/carboys for secondary.

These all had frosting in them, so they smell sugary. That'll come off easily enough, as will the greasy feel.

I'm just doing one gallon batches for a while until I get a couple successes under my belt, then I'll get the hardware to make larger batches of stuff I know can turn out well. I just started a batch of what I hope will be cherry almond mead in a glass jug today. I want to add the fruit in the secondary and needed a big enough bucket, so when I saw them in the store I thought it was worth asking. I just didn't expect to get quite so many.

Dave

Those 2-2.5 gallon frosting pails are perfect for one-gallon batches of mead and wine.

Hinermad said:

These all had frosting in them, so they smell sugary. That'll come off easily enough, as will the greasy feel.

I'm just doing one gallon batches for a while until I get a couple successes under my belt, then I'll get the hardware to make larger batches of stuff I know can turn out well. I just started a batch of what I hope will be cherry almond mead in a glass jug today. I want to add the fruit in the secondary and needed a big enough bucket, so when I saw them in the store I thought it was worth asking. I just didn't expect to get quite so many.

Dave

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Nice score!

I'd do just the opposite of what you're doing, though. I'd do the primary in the bucket, and then secondary in the glass. You really want to reduce headspace in secondary. Of course, if you're adding fruit that will restart fermentation, but I'd get it out of the bucket ASAP after fermentation winds down.

I use frosting buckets to hold 2 gallon batches of sanitizing solution ... both Star San and K-Met ... the frosting buckets come with gasketed-lids, which really aren't air-tight but are good enough to keep sanitizing solution close at hand for a month or so.

Makes it easy to quickly dip a hydrometer or racking tube ... because the solutions are mixed and sitting close to the carboy in my frosting buckets.

Emerald said:

I think I have a solution to those excess mulberries now!! Mulberry mead!

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Hmmm, there's an idea. There's a mulberry tree that hangs over the fence around the parking lot at work. Nobody parks under it when the berries are ripe because they drop on the cars and stain the paint. I could spread a sheet on the ground and collect quite a bit.

Unfortunately the birds know about the tree too, and I'd probably collect more than just mulberries. But I do have a ton of raspberry bushes out back...

Dave

Also use a frosting bucket as a Corkador ... put a cup of sanitizing strength k-meta in the and lay some corks around the cup ... snap on the lid ... and the fumes from the k-meta will kill all the beasties on the corks.

Hinermad said:

Hmmm, there's an idea. There's a mulberry tree that hangs over the fence around the parking lot at work. Nobody parks under it when the berries are ripe because they drop on the cars and stain the paint. I could spread a sheet on the ground and collect quite a bit.

Unfortunately the birds know about the tree too, and I'd probably collect more than just mulberries. But I do have a ton of raspberry bushes out back...

Dave

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When I pick the berries, I too just lay a sheet on the ground and then I give the branch or tree trunk(does depend on the size of the tree) a good hard shake or two and the ripe ones fall right off.
We just found out this summer that several of the smaller trees that are in the yard and the back field have white berries! They tend to be much sweeter and it seems that the birds just don't like them as well as the dark black colored ones, so that might be my best bet for getting more. I had not heard of white mulberries so I had to run right in and check them out on the old computer. The white ones do tend to be sweeter with a honey flavor built in so I am think that they would be great for mead.
I must remember to freeze half for the secondary and rack the mead over it.
From the reading that I have done on here that seems to be the general consensus- 1/2 the fruit in the primary and 1/2 in the secondary gives a more complex fruit flavor.
Great Googley Moogley- I guess when I get going about my gardens and plants, I just run on and on.

You could always just let the yeasties eat the frosting ;P

Teromous said:

You could always just let the yeasties eat the frosting ;P

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Not likely. This is commercial frosting - it has no nutritional value whatsoever. No self-respecting microbe, insect, or rodent will touch it. Only humans will eat this stuff. You can't even use it for spackle because it never dries out.

Dave

Emerald said:

We just found out this summer that several of the smaller trees that are in the yard and the back field have white berries! They tend to be much sweeter and it seems that the birds just don't like them as well as the dark black colored ones, so that might be my best bet for getting more.

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We have a white raspberry bush in the back yard. The kids bought it for my wife for Mother's Day years ago. It's growing even faster than the wild black raspberries. We never picked the fruit because we didn't think it was ripe, it just went from green to pale yellow-pink and then dried up. The birds left it alone and went for the wild berries. I didn't realize the pink color meant they were ripe until I pulled one off while I was mowing one day and ate it. It's very sweet and doesn't really have much flavor, at least not as much as the black ones. I don't think it'd make a very flavorful wine, but with this surpuls of fermenters I might give it a try anyway.

Dave