Cider/water jugs for fermenting?

myfavholliday · 10-26-2009, 05:10 PM

I'm looking for some input on a couple of things. My friend and I did a hard cider experiment a few weeks ago with about 5 half gallons of cider which we cold crashed in the fridge and then backsweeted each of them differently to see what types of flavors were produced. Now that we picked a favorite from the experiment, we want to do a 5 gallon batch of "the chosen one". The dilemma:

The 1/2 gallon batches were fermented in the plastic cider jugs we bought the cider in from Trader Joes. This seemed to work fine. We are considering doing our 5 gallon batch in 5 - 1 gallon plastic water jugs for ease of cold crashing in the fridge. Is this a bad habit to get into? We are worried that the containers might be porous or negatively affect the cider if we make a habit out of using them.

Other option: We have a 5 gallon glass carboy we could use for fermentation; however, neither of us have an extra fridge to cold crash it in (and clearly a 5 gallon carboy will not fit in our regular refrigerators which are full of our food). Not quite as practical.

Unfortunately there are cold crashing space constraints. Any advice/wisdom anyone can offer? We would like to start it ASAP.

**RugenBrau** · 10-26-2009, 06:02 PM

Move some of your food to a coleman ice chest while you cold crash in the refrigerator. Most bars will give you enough ice to last 24-48 hours

**CvilleKevin** · 10-26-2009, 06:08 PM

You could also cold crash the carboy in a keg bucket with some ice - a buddy of mine does this to good effect. However to cold crash effectively you need at least one spare carboy - rack the fermenting carboy to the spare when it reaches the level of sweetness you want, then chill the spare, then rack back to the original carboy. If you dont do this, the yeast will drop during the crash, but they will stay on the bottom of the carboy and will start back up when the carboy warms up.