bottlebomber
Well-Known Member
An obscene amount of brewing has caused me to buy buckets. Before I have only used glass carboys. I have heard many people on here say they will only use buckets, or they will only use carboys.I don't feel that im biased towards one or the other, but this is what I've found:
Buckets - (cons) Im not a fan of a bucket for a strong fermentation. It seems like the airlock gets clogged with krausen(never had this happen in my 7.5 gallon carboys) and that causes the lid to threaten to blow off. Also CO2 tends to escape out of the lid making the airlock especially unreliable for gauging fermentation. Also I've always heard buckets are easy to clean. I find them HARDER to clean. There are way more nooks and crannys, particularly in the lid, which can harbor funk.
(Pros) HANDLE! This by itself almost makes up for the faults. Also, I haven't dry hopped anything in the buckets yet but I am really looking forward to being able to have a large opening to work with for that. Also, they are frikkin cheap, which is why I ended up with 8 of em.
Carboys (cons) They are expensive. They are heavy. They might one day break causing you serious injury (or death, I read once). And the small opening is a real sonofabitch for dry hoppping.
(Pros) they look cool! just kidding. But you can see fermentation taking place, which I find fun and educational. Also, because of the hard, non-porous surface they clean up extremely easy with oxiclean, and I consider them to be more sanitary than buckets. You can fill up a carboy for a secondary and virtually eliminate headspace, which is awesome for the cider I will be aging for 6 months.
this is a highly unnecessary post, but after drinking a gallon of pumpkin ale out of my bottling bucket I felt obliged...
this is what my garage looks like right now, and there are also 2 buckets cold crashing in the fridge.
Buckets - (cons) Im not a fan of a bucket for a strong fermentation. It seems like the airlock gets clogged with krausen(never had this happen in my 7.5 gallon carboys) and that causes the lid to threaten to blow off. Also CO2 tends to escape out of the lid making the airlock especially unreliable for gauging fermentation. Also I've always heard buckets are easy to clean. I find them HARDER to clean. There are way more nooks and crannys, particularly in the lid, which can harbor funk.
(Pros) HANDLE! This by itself almost makes up for the faults. Also, I haven't dry hopped anything in the buckets yet but I am really looking forward to being able to have a large opening to work with for that. Also, they are frikkin cheap, which is why I ended up with 8 of em.
Carboys (cons) They are expensive. They are heavy. They might one day break causing you serious injury (or death, I read once). And the small opening is a real sonofabitch for dry hoppping.
(Pros) they look cool! just kidding. But you can see fermentation taking place, which I find fun and educational. Also, because of the hard, non-porous surface they clean up extremely easy with oxiclean, and I consider them to be more sanitary than buckets. You can fill up a carboy for a secondary and virtually eliminate headspace, which is awesome for the cider I will be aging for 6 months.
this is a highly unnecessary post, but after drinking a gallon of pumpkin ale out of my bottling bucket I felt obliged...
this is what my garage looks like right now, and there are also 2 buckets cold crashing in the fridge.