Can I use any kinds of buckets to clean/sanitize equipment?

I am wondering if I can use a simple, graden bucket to sanitize and clean equipment in it.

Now.....this is a bucket that has never actually been used, but it is meant to be used in a garden to hold water and stuff. It is surely not food-grade....but I guess it doesnt contain anything that would prevent me from pouring water in it and clean/sanitize in it.
Am I wrong? Do I need food-grade bucket to clean/sanitize equipment?

 

I prefer food grade pails to be sure any liquids that touch anything that touches the beer not to get leached out chemicals from the plastic on them.

 

Yeah. You are totally right and it makes perfect sense.

 

That hot girl with the cold sores will go home with ya and ya might not catch anything but do you really want to take the chance?

Food grade containers are cheap and pretty easy to find. There is nothing that says it has to be a 5 gallon bucket. You might find something large in a different shape. I actually use a 10 gallon box shaped container I got from a food processing plant. The lid wasn't air tight (like I was told it was) so I just use it to soak and store all my stuff in.

 

If you are doing anything in a cold water soak (sanitizing) I don't think it would make much difference. Hot water applications, on the other hand, would probably lead to chemicals leeching into the solution.

But I prefer to sanitize by a star san spray bottle so a sanitation soak isn't terribly necessary. I do have a few home depot buckets I use for odds and ends but nothing that comes in contact with hot liquids.

 

When I switched over to carboys I re-purposed my plastic fermenter as a sanitizer bucket. On brew day I just make up a few gallons of StarSan and throw everything in.

 

Inexpensive white food grade 5-gallon buckets can be found in the paint dept at Lowes. They're only slightly more $$ than the orange Homer buckets at HD.

 

Lowe's (food grade) buckets work great and are much, much cheaper than anything found at LHBS, in my experience.

 

Since you're in Spain, it's hard to say from here where you'd find food grade buckets (maybe used ones from restaurants?), but I'm with the concensus here, in that anything that is eventually going to come into contact with your ingredients or the finished product without being rinsed ought to be food grade. Maybe use it for cleaning, but not sanitizing?