Milk Can Fermenter
Why?
There are three reasons I wanted to build this. First and foremost, I'm tired of smelly plastic buckets that need to be cleaned delicately. I also really hate how hard it is to pry the lids off the buckets. This could be solved with Speidel fermenters, however they suffer from the same problem with retaining smells. The second, I only brew 3 gallon batches at a time with using my eBIAB setup. Plastic buckets are generally 6.5 gallons, which is a little overkill my needs. And finally, the third and less critical reason, I've been wanting to try my hand at dimpling/soldering a tri clover.
Bill of Materials
Fermenter
1. 15qt milk tote
2. 1" Tri clover ferrule x2
Materials
1. Stay Brite, silver bearing solder
2. Stay Clean, soldering flux
3. Mapp gas torch
4. 3ml pipette droppers
5. Blue Magic polish
Cleanup
Soldering the ferrules with Stay Clean flux leaves a ton of residue. Adding additional flux while the solder is cooling tends to smooth out the joints but adds to the cleanup job. Fortunately, a little water, rubbing alcohol, and elbow grease removes most of the residue. To get a final high shine luster I used some Blue Magic and a polishing wheel—the end result usually looks so good it's worth dealing with the intense ammonia smell.
