Food Grade buckets required?

[oc eric]

Is it necessary for your PBW and Starsan buckets to be food grade?

My Star San/Iodophor/Saniclean bucket is always food grade, but half of the time my PBW bucket is not. Anyone read or hear anything difinitive?

[DrDually]

I only use food grade buckets

[dhempy]

Are you asking about buckets for just storing Starsan and or PBW? I don't think it really matters does it? Definitely for fermenting buckets I would think ... but for simple storage (especially of cleaners) why would it matter?

Dan

[maltbarley]

I think he was talking about the buckets he uses for the solution when he is cleaning brewing parts/equipment.

[bwarbiany]

PBW is a cleaner, not a sanitizer, right? Thus anything you use it on will be rinsed/sanitized after cleaning before use (except perhaps hot-side only equipment which self-sterilizes during use). If so, there'd be *no* reason a PBW bucket needs to be food-grade.

[backyard brewer]

Food grade buckets are not that much more money and easy enough to get that I'm not sure why you'd want to use something else anyway. Having said that, I store a lot of my grain in white OSH buckets. I don't think they are food grade since they;re not made FDA approved, but they are HPDE.

I'd have no problem storing PBW in a non food grade HPDE bucket.

[oc eric]

Food grade buckets are not that much more money and easy enough to get that I'm not sure why you'd want to use something else anyway.

That's my take on it. I sometimes get lazy and use the non food grade plastic bin to wash bottles.