Northern Brewer Fermenter?

[mercenary]

I'm a newbie to home brewing having only brew beer with the Mr. Beer kits and I was just given a Northern Brewer 6.5 gallon bucket with spigot installed and a lid with fermentation lock & three piece airlock. My question is since this bucket is advertise as for bottling, can it still be used as a primary fermenter with out the need to buy another bucket?. That way I have a fermenter and bottling bucket all in one, just like the Mr. Beer kits?.

Thanks.

 

[RichBrewer]

You really need to get another bucket. You have to prime the beer with 3/4 cup corn sugar dissolved and boiled in about 2 cups of water which will carbonate the beer in the bottles. When the beer is done fermenting and you are ready to bottle, you will need another vessel to rack the beer into on top of the corn sugar liquid. If you try to add the sugar into the primary and stir you are going to also stir up all the trub and yeast in the bottom of the bucket.
Go get another bucket with a spigot. It will make the process easier for your first few brews. The spigots eliminate the need to siphon.

 

[Brewsmith]

Ditto. Once you have the beer fermenting in the bucket, you now need another for bottling. It is possible to bottle out of the primary by trying to stir in the corn sugar solution completely without disturbing the trub, but good luck on keeping the gunk out of the bottles. Buckets are cheap and the spigots make transfer easy. You only need a 5 gallon bucket for bottling.

 

[Brewpastor]

Pick up a glass carboy or two and use those to ferment and secondary in. Check bottled water distributers in your area. You can often get a 5 gallon glass carboy for the $10 deposit. For a bit more you can get a larger (6.5 - 7 gallon) carboy at your LHBS. Save the NB unit for bottling as has been suggested.

 

[david_42]

You can use the bucket as a fermenter. You should get a second bucket or a carboy to use as a secondary. Then you reuse the NB bucket for priming & bottling.

Or you could use the Mr. Beer fermenter for secondary/bottling.

 

[Radarbrew]

I agree, you will be better off using the bucket you have for bottling only. The glass carboy (s) way is easier, and you'll see soon that "hey, since I have an empty carboy, let's brew another batch..." and so on..

 

[magno]

So long as you are doing two stage fermentation, which is greatly recomended, you should be fine using your bucket as a fermenter and bottling bucket. At some point you may want to upgrade to a dedicated bottling bucket, and primary, but I did my first 15 or so beers using one bucket for both jobs.

If you decide to get a seperate fermenting vessel, a food grade plastic bucket without a spigot can be gotten from a restaurant or grocery store, just ask around. This would make a suitable fermenter, leaving the bucket with the spigot as the bottling bucket.

Glass carboys are in some ways more desireable than plastic buckets. For instance, they will not retain flavors or scratch as easily, they are totaly impermiable by oxygen, and you can see your beer ferment, but of course they are a fair bit more expensive.

-magno

 

[mercenary]

Thanks for all the replys. I'm going to go ahead and get a glass carboy. Thanks.