My wife procured several a coke barrels from my local coke bottler for rain collection. She brought home a skinny one that I was considering to steal and use as a primary fermenter(with a few mods). It smells like Sprite, so I figured I would fill it with water in the sun for a few days to soak the residual flavor out. Questions are: will soaking work to remove the favor? If not what will?
Maybe a big IIPA ?
LOL…that would probably work. 
Are they plastic or metal barrels?
Metal should clean up fairly easily. A hot PBW soak and maybe replacing any gaskets and you should be fine.
Plastic may take quite a bit of work to get the smell out. There was a thread a few weeks ago ago about getting rotten grain smells out of an insulated cooler mash tun that had lots of ideas.
Paul
Honestly, there’s probably no way to be sure until you try. You’ve probably got a good chance though. I’d add some oxiclean to the soak water to help.
I have a 60 gallon plastic grape must barrel that I got from a winery. I’m sure it smelled like grapes then, but not now.
Baking soda and hot water works wonders to remove odors.
It’s a plastic barrel…I like the baking soda idea…I’ve had some success with it previously as a safe soap additive. If the doesn’t work, I’ll go for the oxyclean
Thanks!
Oxyclean. Soak overnight.
But, ferment one batch and the sprite smell will be gone and I doubt you’d taste it in the beer.
I just bought 3 18 gal food grade barrels but they do have a plastic smell that I do not want to come through in my beer. Would Oxy Clean Or baking soda be best or could I mix the two. I was going to soak with bleach
Soak in bleach and they’ll smell like bleach instead of plastic.
I’d do oxiclean or baking soda - possibly alternate the two - but don’t mix them. They might react with each other and cancel each other out.
I think I’d start w/a good detergent (Dawn?) first to cut any oily processing aids. Then I’d hit it w/some PBW - the hotter the better. I’d use oxyclean only if I were sure there was no fragrance oil in it - plastics can take up oils fairly easily and fragrances are usually oils. Baking soda works on stinky fatty acids, but that’s probably not going to help you.
Bleach is a good sanitizer. It probably won’t eliminate plastic smell because there is little if any interaction between bleach and the plastic. They package it in polyethylene. The plastic shouldn’t absorb any bleach odor if you rinse it well enough.
Thanks for all the posts…I have had it soaking in water and baking soda for the past few days…sounds like I may need something stronger.