Stink bucket

[MmmBeer]

My primary is still kinda smelly after 2 soft sponge cleansings with a mild detergent and 2 sanitizing soaks! It smells like that kinda gross trub smell but a little more rank. Now my beer is in its bottles and conditioning and I'm worried something went wrong. Any suggestions about the bucket? The beer?

[Dave A]

Perhaps it's time for a new bucket? After each batch I fill mine to the brim with a mild bleach solution for a few days, then rinse well and let it sit again with plain water for a day or two.

[wortchillergoal]

Yes, use a carboy as your fementer. You wouldn't drink your beer out of a plastic cup. I was forced to go to my carboy as someone put a very strong lemon cleaner in my plastic fermenter, they did me a favor. When you do big beers and want to use a blowoff tube instead of an air lock there is tubing that will fit in side the mouth. Any odors or flavors copuld be transmitted to your beer. I make root beer with my boys and have a seperate bottling bucket for that as I don't want a root beer barleywine.

[paul84043]

You never seem to completely get the smell out of plastic. It just won't go away.
Plastic is great for beginners that are testing the water and don't want to spend 20$ for a 6.5 gallon primary and 15$ for a 5 gal. secondary.
Spend the money, you'll be glad you did.
Buy the handles as well, they're worth it.

[MmmBeer]

yeah. I'm gonna shell it out... I'm moving in 1 month though and do not like the idea of having to transport two giant glass bottles. I'll wait until I move and order them. Until then I actually did get the stink out o the bucket.. took a 3 day bleach soak. And the beer from that batch actually turned out great!

I have been a chronic worrier when it comes to my beer (I know its against the mantra), but I've come to realize beer is like a child, you can care and nurture it but in the end there's only so much you can do for it, and then you have to be confident that it will turn out ok.

[b3s]

plastic absorbs smells...every so often you just gotta get rid of it or use it for something else. i converted my buckets to a mash-lauter-tun system for all-grain and still use the bottling bucket.

one thing that helps is every so often just make a strong bleach-water concentration and let it sit for a few days.