Hi,
I did something really stupid. after brewing my first batch of beer, I got lazy and didn’t clean my primary fermenter right away and left it for a few days… and horrible bacitera and whatever else started growing and smells really bad… I’ve cleaned it twice with bleach, but still can’t get that smell out… should I just give up and buy a new fermenter??
I assume this is a plastic bucket fermenter? If so, then I would go ahead and replace it. If you ever decide to get into sour mashes or brewing lambics, you can use the stinky one.
yes, i did forget to mention it was plastic… but thank you for the adivise… I think I’ll buy a new.
The risk vs. the cost to replace it is a no brainer in my mind. Replace it and have peace of mind.
I know its a dumb question… But I’m a beginer… and I thought maybe it was still either able to be washed off, or that it wouldn’t effect my next brew…
Your old bucket will work fine to mix sanitizer, rinse bottles and use as a slop bucket. Welcome to the hobby.
I got buckets out the ying-yang. Yes- welcome to the hobby! 
Wow! That’s one hell of a trick! ;D Seriously, you will have a half dozen buckets or more floating around before long and you will always need one more.
When you buy another bucket go for the larger size (7.9g) that are usually sold for wine making.
Also, I’ve had buckets that got bad infections that took a while to clean and sanitize. After sanitizing with a couple of different chemicals for a long time it was okay. But it is usually best to play it safe and get a new one.
Why not scrub it out, rinse and soak in bleach for a few days? After that rinse real good because most bleach these days contain chloramines. Then when you are ready to use it again soak it in iodaphor, rinse or not depending on your concentration and be confident that it ready to do it’s job.
IMO if you can’t clean a dirty bucket you will get a contaminated batch eventually. Wash it with oxiclean and a terry cloth good and give it an over night soak full of water and a cup of bleach then let it air dry. Good as now if it’s not scratched up.
If you still want to try an clean it you could try soaking it in a strong solution of PBW, I’ve had some good luck doing that with a mash tun I took a couple of days to empty :P.
Buckets are cheap. Get a new one, and remember the lesson. And there are plenty of uses for such a bucket that don’t care if it smells a bit. That stuff seeps into the plastic. That’s why most of us move up to glass carboys pretty quickly.
I moved from carboys to buckets. They’re cheap, easy to clean, and cheap.
Definitely get a new bucket. It’s just not worth the risk of contaminating a batch of beer. Like others have said, the smelly bucket can be used for other purposes so no sense in throwing it out.
Brandon
While I agree with other posts that having another bucket around is never a bad thing, the above suggestion is perfectly fine too. Nothing will survive an overnight bleach soak and subsequent sanitizations on brew-day as long as the bucket is clean to start with (free from soil deposits)