Leaking spigot 12 hours into Primary - Help!

[MarkM01]

Just finished up my first all grain batch last night and this morning I noticed that the spigot in my primary was leaking.

My primary holds 7 gallons. The only option I had was to transfer 4.5 gallons to another food grade bucket. I quickly drilled a hole in the lid and retrofitted the air lock.

My question is about the trube at the bottom I left behind. I coulden't fit the hole batch in the new bucket. I'm only 12 hours in to primary. Is this going to be a problem.

I still have trube in leaky bucket. Should I try to put it in the new bucket and dump the clear volume liquid from the top?

 

[duboman]

The trub at the bottom could have a lot of your yeast in it!

I'd try and seal the leak and get everything back into the primary to ensure proper fermentation and attenuation.

In the future keep the bucket with the spigot as your bottling bucket and use a solid bucket for primary

 

[MarkM01]

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll transfer the rest. Fix the leak. And put it all back into the original fermentor.

And I won't be using a bucket with spigot in my primary ever again.

 

[kh54s10]

The trub at the bottom could have a lot of your yeast in it!

I'd try and seal the leak and get everything back into the primary to ensure proper fermentation and attenuation.

In the future keep the bucket with the spigot as your bottling bucket and use a solid bucket for primary

I somewhat agree with this. There is probably a lot of yeast in the trub, but I would say there is plenty of yeast in suspension to get the job done.

Though the results between the two vessels may differ because of yeast cell counts starting at different amounts.

I am also not a fan of fermenting in a vessel with a spigot unless it is a quality fermenter like a conical.

 

[Queequeg]

12 hours into primary; the trub is mostly break material. The likehood the yeast hasn't flocked yet.

 

[unionrdr]

I fixed the problem of getting the spigot too tight or not tight enough with this simple fix. I got this sheet of brown rubber at Lowe's (kinda like bike inner tube patches used to be made out of),

I traced the spigot seal onto the material & cut it out with a razor knife. Then soaked everything in Starsan after clean/rinse. Pass the lug of the spigot through the mounting hole, then the new seal, then the white one & thread on the lock lug. It will now lock down tight without pushing the seals out of place.

I do this on my bottling bucket as well.

 

[MarkM01]

Thank guys.

I transferred the trub. Fixed the spigot. Resanitized everything. Then transferred everything back into the into the primary again.

I had over tightened the spigot causing the rubber washers to distort. Just like Unionrdr explained.

Lesson learned. I'll try the rubber seal material trick, but this fermenter bucket will be relegated to bottling duty.