Food Archives | Page 8 of 8 | Five Gallon Ideas

Refrigerator

Posted on June 24, 2012 by trevor

Disclaimer: This experiment was not a success when using a plastic bucket. The principle is sound, but the impervious nature of plastic prevents enough evaporation to cool the system noticeably. If I can find a 5 gallon unglazed terracotta bucket, I will try the experiment again.

The “pot-in-pot” refrigerator dates back at least 5000 years. The principle is simple, a small pot is nested inside a larger pot, and sand is packed into the gap. The sand is kept moist at all times. When the moisture evaporates through the top (and more importantly through the sides) it cools the inner pot to a surprisingly cool 59ºF (15ºC) – cool enough to keep meat for two weeks (source)

The evaporative cooling process is the same our bodies use to cool off when we sweat.

I built one of these pot refrigerators using one of my trusty five gallon buckets, but since the only contact with air is at the top, it did not evaporate enough to make any temperature difference. We tried to speed up the evaporation by putting our fridge beside a fire, so it would benefit from the heat and dry air, but it changed very little.

We live in a very wet climate, which is bad for evaporation. The drier your locale, the better this type of fridge will work.

Wine or Cider Press

Posted on May 25, 2012 by trevor

Category: 5 Gallon Bucket Uses

This is a reader submitted guest post from Shannon of Island Shire Farm.

Today we created a wine press.

I used some ideas from a couple of guys on the Internet, with a few of my own modifications.

Here are the materials we used to make this unit:

1 10′ long 2×10
1 Home Depot bucket, very orange and unscratched
2 yards of netting fabric
1 8×8 fence post (14″ segment)
1 car jack
Tray to catch juice

First cut the 2×10 board into two 31″ pieces and two 18″ pieces. We cut the remainder into two rough hexagons that fit into the bottom of the Home Depot pail as platens, or squishing devices.

The greatest modification we did was in terms of what we did to the pail. Rather than the very large 1″ holes that Kimball Herrick used in his plastic buckets, or the spigot only that Kevin Kossowan used in his pail, we drilled a series of 1\2″ holes as close to the bottom as possible for the wine to pour out, and then a few more about 2″ and 6″ from the bottom, just for a little air flow.

The press itself is basically just a box with the four corners supported with little triangles for extra strength. At first we made the bottom triangles too big, and had to reduce the size so that the bucket could protrude a little toward the back. The power is supplied by a car jack which we ingeniously hung from the top with a single bolt. My jack’s base didn’t have any holes for bolts, so I inverted Kevin Kossowan’s design, and I think it’s better for it, since the base has a much larger area of pressing on the platen. In the photos, the press is sitting on top of a wooden chair to get it up off the ground.

Here my helper loads the grape must, skins and all, from a 20 gallon food grade pail into the netting fabric, which is held in a stainless steel bucket. After this he pulls all four corners together and ties it all up into a nice little wet package with string. A lot of juice drains out this way, but the press gets the rest of it out quite nicely.

Here is a closeup shot of the platen being pushed down into the pail with our monster plunger. The car jack puts a good amount of force on the platen. The puck of skins and seeds comes out pretty dry.

Each one of these packages is called a “cheese.” We noticed that the cheese tended to spread out quite a bit in the first pressing, and since our platens don’t go all the way to the very edges, some of the cheese pooches out from under the platen inside the pail. So we took the much drier cheese out, jiggered the edges into the middle, and then twisted the whole package tighter and put it back into the press. We usually got more juice out that way.

For a while we pressed with just one package of must tied into cheesecloth. However, cheesecloth threads tend to move around, and on the third batch ours tore, so I had to go off to get some netting type fabric from Joann’s. Then we had enough fabric to do two at a time, so everything went a lot faster after that.

The tray is one that I bought from a thrift store, and fittingly has wine bottles on it. We drilled a hole along one edge and the liquid just drops down into a vessel. We will still be able to use the tray, and if anyone wonders what it is, we will say that it’s a WINE tray, can’t you see that?

From about 13 to 15 gallons of must, we have ended up with 10 gallons of liquid. Some of this will be lost in the various rackings we will do over time, to get rid of sediment.

If we ever get a big haul of apples, apparently I could also used this as a cider press, but that is for another day.

Editor’s Note: This design is a simplified version of the “Whizbang Cider Press” which is designed to be built yourself with some manufactured speciality parts. A photo essay is on the whizbang website, and detailed instructions are published in book form.

Cutting Board

Posted on May 22, 2012 by trevor

Category: 5 Gallon Bucket Uses

Here’s a neat add-on to a kitchen bucket – the bucket board! You can cut vegetables right on the board and conveniently scoop the bits you don’t eat into the bucket. This would work well with a five gallon compost caddy, or even directly into a five gallon worm farm.

The biggest users of this unit are fishermen, who use the bucket board to clean fish while on the job. It would also work camping (you do bring five gallon buckets camping with you right?)

See more details on the five gallon bucket board.

Chicken Feeder

Posted on May 8, 2012 by trevor

Category: 5 Gallon Bucket Uses

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Article Contents

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Best Commercial Chicken Feeders
Make your Own 5 Gallon Bucket Chicken Feeder
More 5 Gallon Bucket Chicken Care Equipment

Best Commercial Chicken Feeders

These are 3 chicken feeders we have used and recommend.

Hanging 17″ Galvanized Feeder

We like our feeders as large as possible, so we don’t have to go out as often to fill up chicken food. Before we built our 5 gallon bucket feeder, we used one like this for 20 Rhode Island Reds. We filled it every couple days. Unlike our metal chicken waterer, it never west rusty but when we switched to a more crumbly organic feed it didn’t flow as well. This feeder doesn’t come with a cover, which is highly recommended if your birds roost above their food.
Find on Amazon >>

Plastic Enclosed Feeder

When we only had 4 birds we used a smaller plastic feeder like this one which worked great. It keeps the food enclosed so they can’t poop on it. If they made a larger version we would have gone with that instead of the metal cylinder.
Find on Amazon >>

Mason Jar Chick Feeder

This is the best feeder for chicks. It’s cheap and has rounded corners so those little chicken babies don’t hurt themselves. We used a narrow mouth mason jar which seemed to fit great. When refilling, just dump all the leftover chicken feed back out into your supply before screwing it back on, or you’ll get feed everywhere. Chicks are hungry so you’ll be refilling this often until they grow up enough to use the adult bird feeders.
Find on Amazon >>

Make your own 5 Gallon Bucket Chicken Feeder

I made this feeder because our old metal feeder didn’t flow well using organic feed, which was for some reason was very crumbly and would clump much more. Instead of trying to punch bigger holes in the metal feeder, I built this one from scratch. An important side benefit for us is that this new feeder is gigantic! We fill the feeder up much less now than we used to. Total cost for this project was less than 10 dollars.

The 5 gallon bucket feeder is much easier to make than our 5 gallon bucket waterer, because you don’t need to seal everything to create a vacuum inside the container.

Benefits of this Feeder over commercial feeders we have tried:

A tiny fraction of the price
Twice the capacity
Won’t rust
Hole can be enlarged for different feed types
See the feed level at a glance

Ingredients

You will need:

5 gallon bucket (lid is optional)
Nuts and bolts (I use these stove bolts)
Plastic saucer with vertical sides (14″ seems good)

You want a saucer with vertical sides because otherwise chickens will scratch their food all over the place; scratching is how they find food in the wild.

The saucer I’m using isn’t completely vertical, but it is close enough to work. Here’s an example of a “deep” saucer, which is the kind you need.

Stage 1: Drilling

Holes need to be drilled all over the place. First drill three holes in the bottom of the saucer unit.

These holes need to line up perfectly with 3 more holes on the bottom of the bucket. Flip the bucket upside down and rest the saucer on its bottom, now facing up. You can mark where to drill with a long, skinny pen or just drill right through, which is what I ended up doing.

Now we need a hole near the bottom of the bucket for feed to flow through. The largest drill bit I have is 1/2″ which isn’t nearly big enough, so I cut about a one inch round hole with an exacto knife. It is important to not cut the hole too high. I made the center of the hole roughly level with the top of the rim. It’s better to underestimate the size of the hole at first and cut away more as needed. If you have a hole saw (I want to buy this one but cannot get it shipped to Canada) you can very quickly drill a large perfectly circular hole where you need it.

I made only one hole at first, and another one later on the opposite side. Two holes in the bucket seemed to more than enough for 20 greedy chickens.

Stage 2: Bolting

Securing the saucer to the bucket is very easy, just thread the 3 bolts through the 3 holes and attach 3 nuts. I used some extra large nuts I had lying around as spacers between the bucket bottom and the saucer.

Stage 3: Testing

When I filled the bucket with feed for testing, it turned out my hole was still not big enough for the feed to flow smoothly. We use an organic feed that seems to have a lot of small particle sized pieces, which prevent it from flowing easily. I kept cutting away at the holes (cutting off below the saucer lip is preferable to cutting above) until I was satisfied with the feed flow.

Only after I found the right hole size for my feed did I make another hole on the back. If you prefer, you can keep cutting holes but I felt 2 was enough for the amount of chickens we have.

More 5 Gallon Bucket Chicken Care Equipment

If you’re building the 5 gallon bucket chicken feeder, you’ll also be interested in our other five gallon solutions to chicken care. Link: 5 gallon bucket chicken care posts.

Brewing Beer or Wine

Posted on May 3, 2012 by trevor

Category: 5 Gallon Bucket Uses

A bucket with a hole drilled through its lid works perfectly as a primary fermenter in brewing. You may choose to add a spigot to the side, which will allow you to tap the liquid off without fussing with siphons or having to lift a pail full of heavy liquid.

There is a commercially available version called the “Ale Pail” (which is technically a 6.5 gallon bucket) which comes pre-manufactured with a spigot, air vent and measurements up the side.

I’ve also seen mash tuns made with 5 gallon buckets, and have been told that they will hold heat well, but I am suspicious. I prefer to use 10 gallon coolers to do my mashing in, since they are already insulated against heat loss (although they are more expensive)

If you have come here interested in home brewing, but are a beginner to the craft, I highly recommend listening to the Basic Brewing podcast. You might also enjoy our one minute wine recipe, where we explain how to easily produce your own wine.