makeshift secondaries (line cooks?)

So I work in a couple restaurants, and recently I've been taking the 5 gallon pickle buckets home and cleaning them to use as a secondary. I have washed the buckets and soaked them with a strong concentration of bleach water. The bleach water sat for about a week and took most of the brine smell out, however, there is still some scent left behind. my question is, what else can I use to remove the brine/pickle smell from these plastic buckets?

Pickle smell is exceedingly hard/impossible to remove. There are a bunch of threads on it. Revvy's got a list.

At that point probably not much. After that much time, some of the brine will have permeated the plastic, and you'll probably always have some of the smell there. I'm not sure how much it will affect your beer.

Home Depot sells the translucent buckets and lids (Not the Homer buckets) for less than $5, the lid is $3. They are HDPE #2.

Pickles and Rootbeer are FOREVER...

You'll have better luck with the fryer oil buckets, or even the JIB (Jug-In-Box).

Jibs work great for Starsan. They only last a couple of years though. Never thought about using one for a secondary. You could use one for primary as well. . .

I also work in the foodservice world. one of my customers says it takes about a month to get the pickle aroma out of the buckets. he says the trick is to soak in boiling water every day till the oder goes away. hoope that helps

I picked up a couple pickle buckets about a year and a half ago. The only way I was able to finally get the last of the smell out was to let them sit outside in the summer sun for a month or so. They're totally odorless now.

It's not a quick fix, but it worked.

Firehouse Subs sells them for $2.00 with the lid and donates the money to injured firemen. It's worth the hassle.

Sorry this is off topic but this would make a fantastic shirt! -

Zamial said:

Pickles and Rootbeer are FOREVER...

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Personally I cannot stand pickles and wouldn't risk putting my beer in a secondary bucket that formerly housed them. It seems it would be easier to get one of the buckets from Home Depot then to spend all of that time trying to get the smell out of a free one but then again you wouldn't be homebrewing if you didn't like a good challenge since it's just as easy to purchase a six pack then to make one. Good luck to you!

mfox79 said:

I also work in the foodservice world. one of my customers says it takes about a month to get the pickle aroma out of the buckets. he says the trick is to soak in boiling water every day till the oder goes away. hoope that helps

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Wow that really does help thanks! And to everyone else that contributed thanks for your input!
::cheers::

BigRob said:

You'll have better luck with the fryer oil buckets, or even the JIB (Jug-In-Box).

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I took our 5 gal fryer oil jugs and rinsed them with really hot water and took them home. I am going to use pbw on them before I use them, but I have four sitting on the floor waiting for me to brew for them. Nice thing is, all I had to do was ask for them and they were free.