fermenting bucket moldy outside

[egiblock]

I had a bunch of wine making stuff in a storage unit for over a year and as I was clearing it out I realized the outside of the plastic fermenting buckets seems to be mold or somthing... should I just clean them up with some bleach or other cleaner? Or toss them and buy new ones ?

 

[Coffee49]

I assume you have multiple buckets and tops in this condition as well as wine cane, tubing,bungs and airlocks, I would replace cane tubing bungs and airlocks, if the inside of buckets are clean I would use a peroxide base cleaner to attempt to scrub the outside back to white if that is successful use same cleaner on inside and covers. Rinse well and when room temp. Use a sullphite mix with water and go through the process again.Next time you make wine use a cheap kit to see if the sanitation process was successful.

 

[jrgtr42]

Dump anything plastic, especially 'softer' plastic like the buckets, tubing and so forth. Hard plastic... you can try cleaning in PBW and sanitizer, you may get away with it depending on the condition beforehand. Glass and metal you should be able to clean and sanitize.

 

[Blacksmith1]

an acid based sanitizer like star-san should be able to handle the final cleanse on all of it, but that is just my opinion. I've never had this issue to speak from experience.

 

[bleme]

If it's just on the outside, it won't be a problem. When I was using the 'swamp cooler' method to control my temps, the outside of my fermentor was always getting moldy. I'm still using the same buckets with no problems.

BTW, even though it didn't cause problems, I still didn't like mold growing in my house like that so I started using my used StarSan in the Swamp Cooler and the mold never came back.