It needs to be food grade, the ones at Lowes and Home Depot are not
Go to a bakery and ask if you can have some buckets the frosting comes in. They are food grade and I never have to pay for them. They just send them top recyclers
Not everyone here makes kits. I have a 2x10gallon, a 3x8 gallon, 2x6 gallon fermentors and a ton of 5 gallon buckets. I use them all. I did 2 kits last year because I was broke in October and needed something to ferment in January, the bug has to be scratched, Ya knowYes we all like the idea of free when we can, however I would like to approach this from a different angle. The free buckets are generally too small for a full 6 gallon batch. Yes you can make it smaller and ferment out and add water later, which leads to a diliuted wine lower in alcohol. You also can't get an accurate starting SG. Now is it food safe? WHo knows for sure. Will it leach chemicals? Again who knows. I just spent from $75-200 on a kit. $25-30 for a fermenter bucket that can be used dozens of times, lets say 25-30 times. That is a buck per batch. Anybody see where I am going with this? I figure a dollar for peace of mind is well worth it to me.
Here is a plain bucket the same as you would get free with no spigot.
http://www.finevinewines.com/XPListSubRe.asp?MM_PartNumber=5115
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