Preferred Primary Fermentation Vessel?

SS conical here for 90% of the time; will use glass car it's or plastic conical (V vessel) when my SS conicals are not available.

Conicals are so simple; fill, wait for nasties to settle, dump them, aerate add yeast and then dump yeast for secondary. Simple to add dry hops or other ingredients in secondary and a breeze to transfer via C02 into kegs.

Too easy and too convenient to do anything else really.

Love my conicals!

 

Of all of the above options, the only one I have not used is the stainless steel conical. I think glass has its place for some of my sour beers, but for clean fermentations I like the good old plastic bucket. I still use the 1st one I ever had, which I can't say for my first glass carboy.

 

This is really going to screw you over the next time you do the Averagely Perfect Saison. *Hint Hint*

 

Cleaning two carboys. Had about 1-2 gallons of pbw solution and was pouring from one carboy to another. Carboys slipped out of my hand, hit the other carboy shattering both. I instinctively tried to "grab" the carboy, which led to the 8 stitches.

 

I use 6.5 gal buckets. I wish my LHBS carried the larger (7.5?) buckets, but I'm stuck with the smaller ones. They're cheap, easy to clean and second as a Homer work bucket when they get scratched up. 95% of the beers I brew don't need a secondary. They go from the bucket into the corny keg within a month and into the keezer when the time is right.

 

I use glass carboys exclusively but every time I read one of these threads I start to reconsider.
Bottling 10 gallons tomorrow (2 X 5gal glass carboys), fingers crossed. I find that putting them inside milk crates helps

 

Of the five batches that I've done so far, three were fermented in an old wine-making bucket with a spigot, one was fermented in a new bucket without a spigot and one was fermented in a 6.5g glass carboy. I got the new bucket because I figured the spigot was one more thing to clean, which was a waste of time and a risk of infection. I've always done all of my racking with an auto-siphon, even for filling bottles. To the people who prefer a bucket with a spigot, what do you use it for? Transferring into a secondary? Transferring into a bottling bucket? I think I'm worried that the spigot, which is on the outside of the bucket, will get exposed to nasty bugs between the time I pitch my yeast and the time that I'm ready to transfer into another container.

 

Love my glass 6.5 gal big mouth bubbler

 

Buckets, especially great with top cropping yeast

 

Been using free plastic buckets that I got from the Publix bakery now for a couple years, that used to have icing in them. I'm tossing them now due to their age and I'm looking at getting a couple Speidel fermentors.

 

I like glass, but I've starting using more Better Bottles. Buckets are great, but I only have 2 of them.

Been looking at the big mouth plastic bottles, but I'm really eye ballin a SS conical to pump out regular brews, and keep the BB and glass for aging sours, which is why my fermenter collection keeps growing!

 

what are you talking about here? Do you have a link?

 

plastic buckets (with valve would be preferable). If you use a fermentation freezer with controller like I do, oxidation isn't much of an issue because the freezer fills up with CO2 as soon as fermentation begins. If you're not always opening it up to mess with your beer, it's pretty much full of CO2 (confirm this by trying to light a lighter in there right after you open it). Since I never mess with my beer till bottling day, works like a champ, and 4 week primaries are the norm.

I suppose there might be superior setups, but for the price this has worked great for me for years.

 

here is the link:
http://www.ssbrewtech.com/collections/ftss/products/ftss-temp-control-for-7-gallon-bucket-chronical
the whole system costs like $475 or so, but this is the ferm control that I was talking about.

 

been using plastic buckets since the beginning of homebrewing. I love easy to clean and transfer.

 

That looks friggin' sweet.

 

It really does. Just when I thought I didn't need anything else(except more kegs, always want more kegs).

 

I'm curous about these questions as well.

 

Yeah, I'm totally ordering one today and a Brew Bucket as well. Dammit.

 

I voted plastic bucket, no valve. The last few batches I've used my glass big mouth bubbler, but after reading all the negative comments on them (lots of defects in the glass resulting in easy breakage), I think I may retire it and go back to the good ole bucket or maybe pick up a plastic big mouth bubbler.