Reddit reviews 6.5 Gallon Bottling Bucket with Lid and Spigot for Bottling Beer

Don't buy a kit! They sell you all kinds of shit you won't use when there are better options for similar money.

Get a brewing bucket as if you don't have a bottler then this will make your life so much better.

Get 2 carboys (glass is best but better bottles will work too). Check Craigslist for these...you can get some awesome deals.

Get 1 Refractomoeter instead of a hydrometer because they use WAY less of your must to calculate and they aren't mega fragile like hydrometers are.

You will want an auto siphon

You will want a carboy brush that fits on a cordless drill because cleaning a carboy without one fucking sucks (and for 18 bucks this is a no brainer).

You will need sanitizer. I personally like Iodophor because it's super cheap, it doesn't really foam up and it lasts forever. I bought one of THESE bottles like 2 years ago and it is about half full even though I brew between 50-100 gallons a year.

I always advocate people start with beer bottles rather than wine bottles. The reason for this has less to do with the bottles and more to do with equipment. The Ferrari Bottle Capper is 14 dollars while a good floor corker for wine bottles will set you back 60 bucks. In addition, it's cheaper to bottle in 20 ounce beer bottles with caps rather than in wine bottles with good corks. Use of a double lever corker for wine bottles should be considered a war crime...seriously...unless you're a masochist who loves dumping wine everywhere and having to clean it afterwards...then just avoid them...they are absolutely awful.

If you go the wine bottle route then NEVER use agglomerated or colmated corks (the ones made from tiny pieces of cork glued together) as they fall apart and will leave chunks in your bottles. In addition they don't age well, so you are much more likely to lose your brew to spoilage. I like synthetic Nomacorc but you can also buy very good quality solid natural corks as well.

Good oxygen absorbing bottle caps on the other hand are mega cheap. Again...this isn't about one being better than the other, so you can use either one.

For wine bottles, I REALLY like the ones with screw tops because they make it nice and easy to cap your bottles once opened. But for all of your bottles buy these locally...shipping will double or triple the cost of these vs buying locally. I get them for 15 bucks a case a few miles from my house...they're almost 30 a case on Amazon or close to that from Midwest or from Ohio (shipping is like 11-15 dollars a case.)

For beer bottles...I prefer clear, but they'll be tough to find locally so I often end up with brown ones. Again...buy these locally not online due to shipping costs. Your local brewing supply stores buy these pallets at a time so even Amazon can't compete with the lack of shipping costs.

6.5gal plastic fermentor - $17.88 (Don't bother with glass fermentors!)

6.5gal Bottling Bucket - $18.81

Hydrometer - $12.99

3 3-piece airlocks - $5.00 - trust me, they'll break.

stopper not needed with plastic fermentor

Bottle filler - $5.09

10 ft 3/8th inch tubing - $10.99

Auto siphon - $8.76

don't need a bottle brush with plastic fermentor

144 bottle caps - $5.78

Use any pure sugar for priming - just calculate it right. I use cane sugar without issue.

Wing bottle capper - $15.48

Dial thermometer not really needed if you're slapping on an adhesive one, but definitely get this for a hot liquor tun if you're doing that.

Wine thief - $11.20

I never used a funnel or fermentor brush - you can use anything to clean but I suggest Oxyclean rinses

32oz Star San - $20.70

Adhesive Thermometer - $4.84

Total Cost: $137.52. Not ridiculous savings BUT you get 32oz of star san instead of 4oz of io-star which will last you years and sanitizer is expensive. You get a plastic fermentor instead of glass which is so much easier to clean and keep light out. Glass carboys are good for aging and aging is good for wine or special beers. Focus on simple ales that don't require it first.

The real savings come when you do all grain and make your own equipment. You can save $137 alone if you buy a big stainless steel pot and slap on a dial thermometer with a ball valve.

Okay, here's what you do.

Get a six-gallon, food-safe plastic bucket, with a lid with a small (like, quarter-inch) circular hole in it. You'll also need an s-shape airlock to put in the little hole. Get five gallons of apple juice from the grocery store, and a packet of wine yeast.

Clean the bucket with a 1% bleach solution (...the other 99% water) and rinse thoroughly. Add apple juice and yeast to the bucket, seal with the lid and airlock. Wait three to four weeks.

During this time, also get 48 empty beer bottles (you can use your own empties if you drink enough), and enough beer bottle caps. You'll also want a capper -- there are cheaper and harder-to-use options.

After the three to four weeks of fermentation, open the bucket and add about half a cup of sugar (corn sugar works best), and stir it in. Fill the bottles using either the spout on the bucket or a siphon hose, leaving a half- to three-quarters-inch of air at the top of each bottle.

Let the bottles sit a couple weeks to condition (carbonate), then refrigerate and enjoy. The dryness of the resulting cider will be based on which yeast you chose, so if you want a sweet cider use a white wine yeast, and if you want ultra-dry cider, use champagne yeast.

https://www.amazon.com/Gallon-Bottling-Bucket-Spigot-Beer/dp/B000E62H8I

I'd like to do 5 gallon batches. I don't think the quantity from the Mr Beer keg is worth it.

How's this look? Total is around $80.

Fermentation bucket

Bung/airlock

Stock pot

Autosiphon

Star San or Idophor (What's the difference?)

Is there any advantage to having a carboy as well? How long would I leave the beer in the fermentation bucket?

So if I wanted to do sours, I'd basically have to get 2 of everything?

Edit - actually, wouldn't this kit be about the same, but with an extra bucket but no stock pot?

Edit 2 - another pot, 36qt is good price, leaving this here so I can find it again.

Do you have one of these?

I had been adding additional sugar to the bottles for the 3F (or 2F if I skipped the flavoring stage). But that has always been a pain, and is completely hit or miss depending on what kind of flavoring (fruit, ginger, etc.) was used, how much sugar it contributed, and what other yeasts and other bugs it brought with it (I always used organic, fresh/frozen ingredients before this test).

Ginger, for instance, has it's own native yeast that can stall your ferment by killing your kombucha yeast and slowing down the process until its yeast takes over.

What I was doing was transferring the kombucha after the 2F flavoring stage via siphon to my bottling bucket (https://www.amazon.com/Gallon-Bottling-Bucket-Spigot-Beer/dp/B000E62H8I/ -- but these can be had at your local brew shop for about $12), straining out the solids along the way, and adding enough simple syrup (sugar dissolved in a very little bit of water) to the brew, and very gently stirring to mix -- but not enough to introduce too much oxygen (oxidation can stall / prevent your bottle ferment). I then transferred from the bottling bucket using a small hose attached to the spigot that went to the bottom of each bottle... again, as to not introduce additional oxygen.

So came out great, and others never carbed up at all, leaving me with overly sweet 'buch from all the added sugar -- and excessive sugar is something I was trying to avoid by drink kombucha in the first place.

I got sick of it all, and after reading a lot about force carbonation and how easy it is, I decided to not work about carbonation until I get my new kegerator and keg setup up and running. Every time I talk to someone who has done it with kombucha, or who homebrews beer, they immediately say force carbonation in kegs is the only way to go, and that I'll be so much happier not dealing with bottle carbing.

I'm not saying that you can't perfect the carbonation in bottles method... clearly many here have. But even when I didn't use a carboy in between for flavoring and flavored with fruit right in the bottles, the results were always inconsistent, and not worth all the time wasted on sub-par results.

Like all of what I've ever done in my kombucha brewing, I'm looking for the most efficient, cost-effective (not cheapest), and replicable processes, with the eventual goal of being able to make a quality, consistent brew every time. And frankly, I love figuring all this out and continually refining the process. It's a huge scientific puzzle with tons of variables, and it's a blast!

> Proteins are what you're feeling in a 'full' beer, and taking care to ensure they stay in the beer will get you the body/mouthfeel/head retention you're looking for

What would you recommend to do in order to achieve this?

I haven't taken the pH of my water, I've just been using it from the tap. My neighbor brews some of the same exact recipes I did (same LHBS) using his faucet water as well. He does partial mash, but I don't believe he's treating his water/adjusting his pH.

My cleaning process has been pretty light, as far as I can tell. I bought everything new, but I did a PBW clean of my kettle and fermeters before I used any of them. I fill the fermeter with StarSan on brew day and dump that into the bottling bucket just before I transfer from the kettle. I have never used dish soap or anything aside from PBW and StarSan (and then a rinse with water after cleaning) on my equipment.