Hey folks!
I've found these plastic drums for $10 a piece:
http://www.homebrewhq.com/ProductDetail ... uctID=2266
From what I can tell, it'll cost a little over $20 to ship them. The shipping is the same for 1 drum or 10, it seems.
I did a little web crawling, and all indications are that the drums are made from high density polyethylene, which is not really a surprise as they previously contained Liquid Malt Extract.
I've been considering picking up a couple of these to use as fermenters. I've been wanting to make larger batches, I just need some bigger fermenters.
One of the drums would be used for everyday beer fermenting duties, and the other would be used for long term lambic storage.
I realize that plastic is gas permeable, but I figured that a normal beer wouldn't be in the fermenter long enough to matter. And for a lambic, the bugs would benefit from the extra O2. Doing a google search for HDPE & Lambic brought up enough anecdotal evidence to convince me that it might be worthwhile to give these a shot for sour beers.
So, why wouldn't you use these drums? What warnings would you have for me before I buy?