Bill,
Buckets are available in a lot of places, i.e. Ace Hardware, Home Depot for two.You will need to be sure that they are
FOOD GRADE and UV resistant. Food Grade= because of what you are storing in them (some plastics give off chems. harmful to you) if not; be sure that there is a good food grade liner in the pail. UV resistant= some buckets fall apart after long exposure to light.
You might also try a "google" search for food grade storage buckets.
Jim

Chinese food places are a good bet for 5 gallon buckets that held soy sauce and the like.

Donut shops get their fillings in food grade buckets with lids. They usually like to sell them when they're empty and don't charge much.

Jim

We got ours at a local yogurt factory, they just gave them to me.

Annie

I get mine for free from the bakery section of Walmart and Kroger. They get their icing in them, and will gladly give you the "empties."

All you have to do is wash them out. But sometimes they aren't so empty, and that can be a mess. Even so, it beats paying for them.

It's kind of ironic, because Walmart also sells pails---of a lesser quality and without the gasketed lids.

I got mine free from Walmart. They were spotlessly clean. I got 4 of them with the EASY snap down lids.
Shirley

Restaurants are also a good source . . .

Are these able to withstand temperatures such as 195 degrees? We want to store our homemade hot sauce in 5 gallon buckets. We make a habanero/garlic sauce that is tested with a ph meter to be below ph4. We store it for a few months before bottling so the hab,garlic, and vinegar flavours all have time to meld. We have expanded beyond the quart jar size and are looking bigger. I know that the hab mash we get is in a 5 gallon food grade plastic bucket but I am wondering if these buckets everyone gets free or cheap will stand up to hot temperatures or do I need to look for so mething else?
thanks
kendra

Are you talking about pouring the heated sauce into the buckets? If so, no problem. I've poured boiling water into them with no ill effects.

I would be leery about holding them over direct heat of any kind, though.

The buckets I get from the Walmart bakery come in several sizes, btw, and you might look at those other sizes too. There's a three-gallon size, for instance, that, when full, is more manageable than the 5 gallon size. I'm thinking two of those might make more sense to age your sauce than one 5 gallon pail.

I also pour boiling water into those buckets when cleaning them, I give them a wipe with bleach/water solution, then "sanitize" further with a rinse with boiling water. It doesn't seem to harm the buckets at all.

Annie

thank you, yes I was talking about pouring boiling sauces into them. We were concerned about the plastic buckling or some such business. I think you are right 3gallon would be a better size up and we can always go to 5gallon when we get to that size.
Do you all just ask for the department manager or employee and explain what you are looking for or is it more specific than that?
thanks for the help
kendra

It's a matter of timing, because they normally throw them out. All I did was just ask whoever was working if they had any empties.

At one point there was an employee who did save them for me, knowing I would be asking. But after I'd gotten several dozen pails I no longer collected them.