pickle bucket

Acquired a pickle bucket today. Food grade 5 gal. Anyone know if the pickle smell will come out and how to do it?or if it will taint a batch of cider?

 

If you use harsh enough cleaners, that smell will come out eventually. I'd try a bleach-water solution. Maybe an ammonia-water solution, but that might mix with the vinegar of the pickles and smell worse.

 

I'd say oxyclean. or PBW if you have it or can make it.

(PBW is a mixture of sodium carbonate, sodium percarbonate, and sodium metasilicate. or a bucket of oxyclean free versatile with a bag of red devil tsp/90 mixed in. you can get the red devil tsp/90 at Ace hardware stores. accept no substitute. seriously. only the red devil tsp/90 product is 100% metasilicate - the other tsp-like products might contain some other caustic, or even real tsp)

 

Somebody told me that if you leave it out in the sunlight, the light breaks down the harsh aromas. That takes no effort. I would at least give it a try.

 

yeah, water and UV might be enough.

 

I've heard a strong mix of water & baking soda & let it soak for a couple days. I've also heard that Oxiclean Free will nuke it in a few hours. I've never used a pickle bucket before, so I can't say 1st hand; I can only say what I've heard; but I do KNOW that the pickle smell can be eliminated wiyh use, I use a pikle jar as my sugar jar & there's NO pickle odor at al in it. Regards, GF.

 

For the cost of a new bucket it is not worth even half of the effort.
My buddy gave me a couple pickle buckets. 3 months after sitting in his garage and then soaking water in the sunlight, oxy clean, b-brite, bleach, iodophor................still smells like pickles. I never got those pails anywhere near my cider.

 

I also got some free pickle buckets. I use them for soaking bottles or cleaning and sanitizing solutions. I have had them for a few months, smell is still there.

 

Jimmy John's Sandwiches' 6-gallon pickle buckets are da whip.

Oxyclean and PBW (powdered brewery wash) both have sodium percarbonate which works really well. PBW also contains sodium metasilicate which is extremely base and makes pbw a serious cleaner and good choice for presses and other brewery and winery equipment.

I'd go easy on the scrubbing to avoid rubbing scratches into the plastic that might harbor organisms.

If you just gotta scrub ... try to use the white plastic scrub pads rather than the green ones ... the white ones are the less abrasive version.

 

I was gonna use the oxyclean and if scrubbing was needed maybe a 2000 grit sand paper. It would take a thin layer off, and hopefully the smell, with minimal scratching

 

Good luck with any of those things. I bought 2 from Firehouse Subs. They sell them for 2 bucks. I use one of them for washing the car and the other I did the oxyclean and sunshine treatment for about 3 months and they still smells about the same as when I got them. I use it now as a catch bucket for my grist-only for dry ingredients and only long enough to grind and dump straight in the mash tun.

 

I bought food grade buckets at Lowes for $3.45 the other day.....

I wouldn't spend all that time and effort to resurrect a stinker...make it your bottle cleaning bucket and move on.

 

I've got many sauerkraut buckets from a German Club I've been a member of. Washed em well ... some with pbw and others just with sodium carbonate and left outdoors in the sun for a month or so.
Found that the odor couldn't hold up to multiple batches of straight cranberry wine, lemon wine (skeeter pee), ginger wine too. They all smell fine now.
(admittedly though, if I was making a delicate wine such as blueberry or some grape types I would not use a bucket that still had significant odors)

 

Sorry but the one thing that can't be gotten out of buckets to use them for brewing is pickles....I don't think you'll find one success story in all these threads. The pickling brine penertrates way too deep into the plastic.

And probably the olives as well.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/pickle-bucket-173350/

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/pickle-buckets-144485/?highlight=pickle

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/pickle-taste-bourbon-stout-132670/?highlight=pickle

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/pickle-bucket-grist-104109/?highlight=pickle

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/pickle-bucket-85010/?highlight=pickle

As all the above threads have shown, even multiple soakings of oxyclean won't work....If it were that easy there wouldn't be so many threads.

As much as I am all for scrounging, recycling and repurposing, and finding free stuff for our hobby. I have to say pickle buckets really just need to be passed by. Get yourself some frosting buckets, or even soy sauce buckets from the local chinese takeaway, but not anything with vinegar, it's an acid and will penetrate the bucket.

Look for frosting or soy sauce buckets, or go get white hdpe buckets from lowes or had....

 

2000 grit is minimal to human eyes but a high rise condominium for biofilm

 

Gotta go with the "use em to soak bottles" crowd. You can take this scrounge thing just so far. Seriously: how much money do people spend on a hobby like skiing or dirt bikes? Would you pass up a chance to buy a decent pair of skis at a good price because someone told you cut up pickle buckets work just fine? Home brewing is a hobby too. Git you down to Home Depot son! ;-)