Do I need a bottling bucket?

Do I need a bottling bucket, or can I just siphon off the primary or secondary?
I need to be careful of buying to much stuff and drawing attention from SWMBO.

I wouldn't say you *need* one, but man do they make bottling way easier.

You can siphon, but you will need a bottliong wand or something like it to put on the filling end of the siphon. This will help you with flow control, other wise, once the siphon starts, you will have lots of drips and beer lossmoving from bottle to bottle.

Another thought, if you have a primary and secondary pail (sounds like it from your note), leave you wort in the primary longer don't use the secondary, convert your secondary to a bottling bucket and use it.

I think you might need a bottling bucket. You could drill a hole for a spigot in one of your plastic buckets and then just buy the spigot parts instead of the entire bottling bucket. I have never tried it but I imagine using a siphon with your bottling wand would be a major PITA. I am only for batches in to this hobby so you may want to take my advice with a grain of salt

I bought a bottling bucket with a spigot a while back but no longer use it now. The spigot is an inch or more off the bottom of the bucket and we have to tilt the bucket about 45 degrees to get the last few bottles filled. That takes a couple of extra hands. I now just use my autosiphon and prop up the opposite side of the bucket only about an inch. The siphon sucks all the beer out and we only lose about half a bottle.

triangulum: How are you going to prime your brew? If you use priming tabs you can forego the bottle bucket. However, if you use sugar/dme/wort to prime with, I would say a bottling bucket is amost necessary. You could stir your priming solution right into the primary bucket, but then you would most definately stir up a cloud of trub and yeast that I would prefer not to have in my bottles. (the trub is protein, and make cleaning bottles a pain....)

A bottling bucket makes life much easier. It sucks to lose syphon midway. No pun intended

I bottled my first 3 batches using a siphon and bottling wand. It was indeed a PITA. I recently added a spigot to a bucket and cannot wait to have a steady flow that will not be interrupted by a dropped siphon. I drilled the hole so low I had to cut a part of the inside nut off. test run left about 2oz in the bucket.

Guess I'll be getting a bucket.
Thanks for the replies!

They aren't too bad pricewise, about $12 at my LHBS.

The problem with bottling from a primary or secondary instead of using a bottling bucket, is that since you have patiently gone and let your beer settle and clear, in order to mix the priming solution and beer effectively, you would have to stir it in the carboy..which would a) kick up all that nice sediment you have patiently let fall, b) possibly oxydize the beer.

Go to a hardware store and get a translucent or white bucket...but look for one where the 5 gallon mark falls way below the top of the bucket. Usually it will say 5 gallons at 3rd band from the top. (oh get the lid too....I totally regret not getting it when I did.)

Then get a spigot and make a dedicated bottling bucket. It really defeats the purpose of both a long primary/no secondary or a secondary if you have to stir up all the nice sediment you patiently waited to settle just so you can have consistent carbonation.

Mine is the translucent Leaktite brand 5 gallon container with the gallon and liter markings from Homedepot.



Here's a pic of mine from my bottling thread.



https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/revvys-tips-bottler-first-time-otherwise-94812/

But if you try directly from the primary/secondary you will have unsatisfactory results and possibly even cardboard tasting beer.