Can you use your bottling bucket as your primary?

[Kevin79]

I'm looking of making the move to 5 gallon batches in the near future. I already have a 5 gallon kettle and plenty of bottles so I am probably just going to buy my fermenter and siphon separately rather than buying a 5 gallon kit. Currently with my 2.5 gallon batches, I use my lbk and don't use a secondary fermenter at all.

My question is: with 5 gallon batches is it ok to use a bottling bucket as a fermenter and go strait to bottling using the spigot. I'm not sure how much trub is created from a five gallon batch and whether the trub would rise over and clog the spigot.

Yes I could get a primary fermenter if needed and then transfer to a bottling bucket as is often recommended but I'd rather save the money and the hassle if it is possible and won't negatively effect my beer.


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[flars]

You can do this, but you will be putting trub in your bottles. Go to Lowes and get a food grade bucket to ferment in. About $6. Try for 6.5 to 7.5 gallon size for sufficient headspace. Drill a hole for an airlock and you are ready. Then you can rack to the bottling bucket, with your priming sugar solution in it for bulk priming, and bottle.

 

[Falcon3]

It's not recommended. You want to minimize trub in the bottles. Plus, when you're stirring in your priming sugar, you'll stir up a lot of trub. I'd just buy a second bucket. No reason to spend a lot of money on it- you can get a 5-6g food grade bucket at the grocery store or lowes for less than $10. Drill a hole in it and mount a plasic spigot for $4 or so and for under $15 you've got a bottling bucket.

 

[BigFloyd]

For 5 gallon batches, you need at least a 6 gallon fermenter bucket for sufficient headspace.. A 6.5 gallon is even better. The good news is that they are cheap to buy.

If you try to prime the beer in the primary fermenter, you will end up with some very cloudy, yeasty beer in the bottles. That's why we rack to a separate bucket and prime beer without the yeast cake present.

 

[MindenMan]

When fermentation is done, cold crash your primary, and then rack to bottling bucket. Your beer will quite clear going into bottling bucket this way, producing very little sediment in you bottles.

 

[skw]

My question is: with 5 gallon batches is it ok to use a bottling bucket as a fermenter and go strait to bottling using the spigot.

Perfectly possible (I did it when I started out), but inconvenient. You'll have to use a syringe or something similar to put priming sugar in your bottles before filling, as mixing in the bucket would stir up all the sediment again.

 

[BigFloyd]

When fermentation is done, cold crash your primary, and then rack to bottling bucket. Your beer will quite clear going into bottling bucket this way, producing very little sediment in you bottles.

This if you can^^^^^. Putting the primary in the mid-30's for 5-7 days after fermentation is complete gives a nice result.

 

[Paradigm]

I have an old feta bucket a friend of mine got from his work that we use to bottle, auto-sipon and bottle wand, cheap and easy.

 

[JohnSand]

You could also buy another LBK and split your batches.

 

[mlanoue]

If you use carbonation drops in each bottle you can do this. I've done this lots of times and the beers aren't really noticeably cloudy. However, I do think they still turn out better when I rack them from a primary to the bottling bucket.


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