[pete b]

I want to do a lot of experiments, mainly with mead, but sometimes beer, that will have multiple variables. For instance same must with yeast y and yeast X, but also yeast y with and without optiwhite and yeast x with and without optiwhite.
So I want to get six to eight 1.5 gallon fermenters to do these experiments effeciently. I am seeing fermenters of that size go for $22+ and am not having much better luck with food grade buckets to convert into fermenters.
Does anyone have any ideas or sources? Due to the number I am buying I was hopiong to find some food grade buckets I could convert (I have plenty of airlocks and bungs) for $10-12 each.

[BrewBama]

Have you checked your local grocery store bakery department?  They get icing in ~2 gal buckets that might serve your purpose.

I use 1 gal glass jugs for my cider and mead antics for less than $10 a pop. Sometimes I find apple juice in a 1 gal glass jug and just use that.


One day, you’ll wake up and there won’t be anymore time to do the things you’ve always wanted to do. Don’t wait. Do it now.

[Kevin]

Get a three gallon jug of drinking water from where ever sells them. I buy mine at Home Depot or Lowe's. I use the water for brewing and the jug for fermenting just like a plastic carboy. If you want you can just keep the jug or clean it well and take it back to exchange for a new jug of water. My carboy bungs fit perfectly btw.

[Drewch]

What I do most often is buy the 2-gallon food grade HPDE buckets from Home Depot or Lowe's and then I drill a hole just far enough from the bottom to install a bottling spigot.  The bucket is like $5, the lid is $3, and the bottling spigot's are about $2 from Amazon = $10 per fermenter (plus tax).  The excess CO₂ will bleed out through the not-quite-airtight seal around the lid.  Or if you want to get fancy, you can drill a hole in the lid and then add a grommet and an airlock ... that might get you to $13 per fermenter.

My cousin owns an ice cream / candy parlor --- if I lived closer, I could get all the food-grade buckets I could ever need from him in all sorts of 1-, 2-, and 3-ish gallon sizes.  So, I'll second BrewBama's recommendation to make friends will a local grocery store, bakery, or other small business.

And much like Kevin, I also sometimes save conveniently sized PET or HDPE jars and bottles from food products.  The PET jars that peanut butter powder comes in, for example, are about a gallon.  Publix used to sell organic apple juice in 1-gallon glass carboys, but I haven't seen those recently....

And I'm running an experiment letting two small batches sit in the 5-qt drink dispensers from Walmat.  They're made of PVC; so the O₂ permeability should be quite low for a plastic.

And finally, I've also done femto-batches (that would the next thing smaller than pico-brew, right?) in large mason jars with the silicone airlocks designed for pickling.

Edit: These are $5 at Walmart: https://www.walmart.com/ip/5065560927

[pete b]

Lots of good ideas here.

[pete b]

Drewch might have a winner here: Edit: These are $5 at Walmart: https://www.walmart.com/ip/5065560927
Comes with a spigot and I have plenty of bungs that would likely fit in the pouring opening.

[Drewch]

Yeah ... I'm tempted to recalculate all my recipes down from 6 to 3 liters and standardize on those.  They look even more convenient than my current 2-gallon bucket default setup.