55 gallon plastic food-safe barrels with lids -- useful?

[TuttleCreekBrewing]

Hello, I'm a longtime lurker who, next week, will finally be getting a place big enough to let me get into this delicious and rewarding hobby for real. I've brewed a couple times with friends and have read mountains of great information on this forum and others, but let's be honest, I'm still a noob!

So my question is this -- a local thrift store is selling 55 gallon plastic food-safe barrels with lids for $20 each. While my initial brews at my new place will be 5gal, would the 55gal barrels be useful to me in some way, either now or in the future? It would be better if they were metal so I could put them over a burner, but the price seems really good...as long as they'll be useful in some way.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

 

[JoeyChopps]

I have a buddy that ferments wine in them

 

[bullinachinashop]

Seems reallllllllllllllllllly big for fermenting in!
Bull

 

[JoeyChopps]

My buddy gets ridiculous amounts of fresh berries for wine and the 55 gallons aren't the biggest he has too big for me but works for him

 

[bullinachinashop]

For a newer brewer/winemaker without pumps, even for me, this would be HUGE!

 

[runningweird]

someone I found on youtube made a rotating malt sprouter out of one, I made one from a 15 gallon barrel. I have two 55 gallon barrels, I used them as soaking tubs for bottles to remove the labels.

Find out what was in them, they can impart weird flavors if you ferment in them directly depending on the original contents, I know that some people put food safe bag liners in them and ferment in them like that, no real cleanup. They would make great storage containers for bulk grain though, I have about 200 pounds sitting in a closet that would go well in a barrel like that.

you probably won't need them very soon, and if they are available all the time then wait on them and see if they can fit into your final brewery.

 

[JoeyChopps]

Yeah my buddy doesn't use pumps he uses a homemade racking cain and fills a bottle bucket at a time and believe me bottle day is intense

 

[bullinachinashop]

Sometimes I'll do 15 gallon batches in a +/-16 gallon food grade LME container, and its quite a chore to move that thing to the basement after brewing and drinking for 6 hours!
Bull

 

[runningweird]

it would be a great way to do a big batch for a party or for long term aging/different secondary addition experiments - 50 gallons of an ale fermented with a clean fermenting yeast, rack to 5 gallon carboys then add your goodies - fruit, chocolate, dry hop, spices, liquor, wood chips, brett, lacto, malic acid, honey, another yeast strain, so many ideas. that would be amazing, if only i had the carboys to pull it off.

 

[runningweird]

Sometimes I'll do 15 gallon batches in a +/-16 gallon food grade LME container, and its quite a chore to move that thing to the basement after brewing and drinking for 6 hours!
Bull

I did that twice, not fun at all. never again without a pump

 

[TuttleCreekBrewing]

Not a bad idea with the food safe bags. I agree that I'd have to be careful about whatever was in there before, not sure what flavors that might impart. I know there's no way I could handle a batch big enough to fully utilize the barrel as a fermenter, but if I use a food safe bag, is there any reason why I couldn't use it to ferment 5 or 10 gal? At least I wouldn't have a problem with blowoff!

 

[runningweird]

you could just brew 5 gallon batches every week or every few days, add them and keep pulling beer when fermentation is complete.

no reason not to use them for 10 gallon batches, except they would take up lots of space and with that much open area you could run the risk of oxidation over the long term. better off finding one of the 15 gallon LME containers

mentioned above, I have used them and they work just fine as long as you can seal them up properly with the right bung.

 

[StittsvilleJames]

I made a rain barrel from a 55 gallon olive bucket. I couldn't imagine having that much beer in one batch, it's really big.

 

[drew1d]

Wow, that's a lot of beer. How would you even prepare it?... I mean, my stove has 4 burners and each kettle would make a 5 gallon batch. So I'd have to cook on every burner 4 times to get about 55 gallons. (the last using only 3 burners.) Each kit I use is about $30. So that's $330 per drum. There will be no moving it, it will weigh almost 500.lbs

That would be crazy....but awesome.

 

[Elweydoloco]

it would be a great way to do a big batch for a party or for long term aging/different secondary addition experiments - 50 gallons of an ale fermented with a clean fermenting yeast, rack to 5 gallon carboys then add your goodies - fruit, chocolate, dry hop, spices, liquor, wood chips, brett, lacto, malic acid, honey, another yeast strain, so many ideas. that would be amazing, if only i had the carboys to pull it off.

+1 for that. I think that's a hell of an idea.

 

[COLObrewer]

I use my 55 gallon drums to store bulk malt and grain in 50lb sacks, you can fit 2 or 3 in there, most are air tight. That is if it has the wide lid and sealing ring.