Beer Fermenters: Selection Basics for a Good Homebrewing Experience

Beer fermenters are yet another essential homebrewing equipment that no home brewer can do without. Luckily, they come in many sizes, materials and prices to accommodate for the beginner to advanced home brewer. Since we're still talking basics, we'll concentrate on the usual 5 to 6 gallon batches standard for the homebrewing enthusiasts while also touching on the more advanced fermenting vessels such as larger stainless steel conical fermenters.

Immediately after cooling your wort, it is transferred to the primary fermenter where living yeast begins to devour the plentiful grain bill with lust and injurious desire. In doing so, these microscopic life forms begin their slow process of turning the sugars into our favorite beer ingredient - Alcohol! So let's find them a good home and treat these organisms like kings.

Beer fermenters come in several options and get more complicated during mass production, but for the home brewer we'll concentrate on food grade plastic fermenting buckets, glass carboys, P.E.T. Better Bottle plastic carboys, and briefly describe the conical fermenter while saving that topic for a more detailed discussion in an advanced brewing article.

Plastic Food Grade Fermenting Bucket

Food Grade Fermenting Buckets are a great way to get started on your first homebrewed batches while saving quite a bit of money and having the flexibility of choosing your sizes from 2 two 32 gallons. For primary fermentation, it's a good idea to give your yeast a little extra room to wildly create the natural foams during initial activity. In most situations, I like a 6.5 gallon fermenting bucket with a spigot, which are usually placed right above the level where most of the trub (proteins and hop particles) settle. This makes it ideal for transferring to bottles for bottle conditioning, or to a secondary fermenter for a cleaner, clearer beer.

Plastic bucket fermenters are light weight, easy to handle, are inexpensive when compared to other beer fermenters, and you don't need to worry about broken glass if dropped. If you opt for the buckets without a spigot, you'll have to siphon the beer to your next step with an Auto-Siphon. As with most beer fermenters, you'll need a Plastic Airlock or an S-Shape Airlock held in place with Drilled Rubber Stoppers to keep air and bacteria out while allowing fermentation gases to escape the fermenter.

They may be a bit more difficult to clean as scratching the interior of the bucket can harbor bacteria, so disinfect well. I also don't like the way they look (but that's just me)! And that I can't see what's going on inside without opening it. But I do like that they're cheap, and they're standard in many homebrewing kits, with the better ones selling the ones with the spigot.

My final recommendation on Plastic Fermenting Buckets: Get one that's at least one gallon more than your wort, and sport the extra couple of bucks for the spigot.

Glass Carboys

Glass Carboys have been and continue to be the preferred fermenting vessel for many homebrewers. The name, always a mystery to me, came from the Arabic word qarraba, which simply means "big jug". The main consideration is that the taste is always consistent and doesn't have any flavors of plastic - this is more a perception than fact in many cases, especially if the equipment has been sanitized well. But the advantages are clearly there - no chemicals escape into the beer, less chance of oxygen getting into the beer, see through so you can watch the little guys in action, and they will last a lot longer. They also come in all the sizes you need and are used to from 3 gallons to 6.5 gallons.

But they are very heavy and already weigh from 9 pounds to almost 18 pounds, without the 50 pound, five gallon beer inside. And if they break, they shatter glass and beer all over! Plus, they can be pricey to ship - unless you happen to catch this Free Shipping Deal on this 6 gallon badboy.

The biggest drawback for me is that they don't have a spigot, so like the plastic fermenting buckets without spigots, you'll need an Auto-Siphon. As with most beer fermenters, you'll need a Plastic Airlock or an S-Shape Airlock held in place with Drilled Rubber Stoppers to keep air and bacteria out while allowing fermentation gases to escape the fermenter.

My final recommendations on Glass Carboys: Get the Paklab Glass Carboy 23 Liter, 1.9-Pound Boxwith free shipping if they still have it. It will be about the same cost as a plastic bucket fermenter, will have one gallon over the standard five gallon batch, and will have that sought after cleaner flavor. Glass carboys are also great for secondary fermentation because of their cleaner finishing.

PET Plastic Carboys

Polyethylene terephthalate plastic carboys have some of the advantages of plastic bucket beer fermenters including being easy to use, lightweight and can be ported at the bottom to add a spigot. Most PET carboys don't come ported, but I'd recommend getting picking up a valve to add to the fermenter. PET plastic is a food grade material that is a good moisture barrier that keeps out light, is incredibly lightweight and has some of the great qualities of glass like low oxygen permeability and can be soak sterilized.

I would have also added lower costs, but demand and improved quality is making PET plastic beer fermenters more and more expensive. But the advantages make them worth considering. As with the above mentioned beer fermenters, if un-ported, you'll also need an Auto-Siphon. As with most beer fermenters, you'll need a Plastic Airlock or an S-Shape Airlock held in place with Drilled Rubber Stoppers to keep air and bacteria out while allowing fermentation gases to escape the fermenter.

Final recommendations on PET Plastic Carboys: make sure, no matter which brand, that they clearly state genuine PET plastic, otherwise you risk harming your beer and yourself with unwanted chemicals. And make sure that you have an extra gallon over your standard wort volume for proper fermentation.

Finally, some notes about Conical Fermenters

I'm saving the topic of conical fermenters for a different discussion because I'm still working up to that level myself, both in experience and in my ability to afford it, so I can't truly make any recommendations other than I think they're awesome and I want 15 of them.

What I do know is that they're stainless steel with much higher capacities, last an incredibly long time, come with triclamps that attached valves to the fermenter, come with butterfly valves for trub removal and yeast collection, movable racking cane valve, come with legs with enough space for a handtruck, and make you feel like a serious homebrewer.

But for now, I have no recommendations, only a desire to graduate to one. And when I do - you'll get a detailed report along with some videos for some virtual sampling!

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