Had to pick between a glass crock and a food-grade plastic bucket for my first sauerkraut batch

Drew Hart · 2026-05-02T05:30:02.972874+00:00

I went with the bucket because it was half the price at $12 and didn't shatter when I dropped it in my kitchen, but now I'm wondering if the plastic is leaching anything into the brine after 3 weeks of sitting there.

emmam894mo ago

Ugh ok but real talk, food grade plastic is tested for short term contact, not 3 weeks of sitting in salt and acid brine. That's not really what "food grade" means in practice.

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john_fisher4mo ago

Is it really that big of a deal though? Food grade plastic is literally made for this stuff, tons of people use buckets for ferments all the time. I've done half a dozen batches in a white bucket and never tasted anything weird or had it go bad. I think people overthink the leaching thing unless you're leaving it in there for like a year or something.

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the_leo4mo ago

Three weeks is plenty of time for something to start leeching, especially with salt and acid in the mix. Most food grade plastic is fine for short ferments, but the longer it sits, the more I worry about it. @john_fisher is right that you probably won't taste anything weird, but I still don't trust it for anything past a month or two. I dropped a glass crock once too, shattered across the whole kitchen floor, took me an hour to find all the pieces. But I just bought another one secondhand for $15 because I didn't want to eat plastic with my kraut every day. At the end of the day, it's a personal risk call, but I figure glass is the safer bet if you plan on letting it ferment for more than a few weeks.

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