I know some of you folks make wine as well as beer. I recently bought several wine kits and the larger buckets to ferment them in.
Question: “Do you ever use your 8 gallon wine buckets to ferment beer?”
I ask because my plastic fermenters often pick up hop odors. I wouldn’t want this transferring to a wine, especially a white.
I use my 8gal bucket for beer and lot I like bottling a twelve pack+ and still having a full keg. But I only make 1-3wine kits a year. So prior to a wine batch the bucket gets an extra intense cleaning session hot pbw lots of scrubbing and rinsing til I’m satisfied. Never had any problems with flavors transferring to the wine.
Where I am from wine is the dominant hobby, so all primaries around here are the larger ones. These are sold as wine and beer started kits with no differenciation. Though beer kits up here are designed for 5 canadian gallons (6 US)
Absolutley no issues using for either.
[quote=“fightdman”]I ask because my plastic fermenters often pick up hop odors. I wouldn’t want this transferring to a wine, especially a white.[/quote]If your buckets smell like beer, you’re not cleaning them adequately. A PBW soak and nothing but a soft cloth for cleaning should keep them odor- and scratch-free.
I use my wine bucket for beer all the time. It’s nice to have the extra head space, I never get blowoff, and the seal is better than on my beer bucket.
+1 7.9gal buckets Are good quality I did tear a lid once but it was my fault. Un-
seal the lid all the way around before you try to tear it off
Maybe you don’t put enough hops in your beer 
I do the PBW soak (for days) and sometimes after rinsing they still have hop odor.
Off topic here, but since you brought it up…
I am planning on moving to kegging sometime this year, but I always give my dad a six pack of each batch. I figure the best way to pull this off would just be to fill six bottles with the beer before putting any into the keg and use those individual sugar capsules in each bottle. How do you go about it?
Yeah I use carb drops Coopers not the dme ones they don’t dissolve all the way leaving floaties. I get the bottles and the keg ready get the siphon going into the keg make sure it’s pulling clear beer then kink the siphon hose and move to filling the bottles. It think @Shadetree uses table sugar to dose his bottles individually.so table sugar would work also I just don’t know the rate off hand or a simple process of how to go about it.
Maybe you don’t put enough hops in your beer
I do the PBW soak (for days) and sometimes after rinsing they still have hop odor.[/quote]
Same here. All my plastic fermenters smell like hops and have a pale yellowish hue to them. They always get rinsed clean in hot water followed by a hot 24+ hour PBW soak. I’ve never been able to pick up any hop flavors when I’ve used these fermenters for meads and ciders, but that could just be that my palate is numb to low levels of hops.
[quote=“fightdman”]Maybe you don’t put enough hops in your beer.[/quote]I don’t typically make anything with less than 75 IBUs, but I have pretty much stopped dryhopping in the fermenter (do it in the keg instead). It’s also possible that I just can’t detect hop aroma at that low a level any more, kind of like the constant whine in my ears from playing guitar that I can’t hear unless I really focus on it.
What? What did you say? 
That’s how I dry hop too. But I often use a hopback as well to give my hoppy beers a little more oomph.
