Carboy suitability

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feffer

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The wiki mentions that plastic carboys with PET material are suitable for wine. Better Bottle is PET and that's what I've been using. However mine are all in use now and I noticed Wally Mart has a 5 gal plastic water cooler bottle for a very good price. It is code #3 -- and states that it is
Rigid PVC, Free of Bisphenol-A.
Would this be suitable for secondary fermentation? I'm thinking 1-2 months maximum when the BB gets freed up.
 
That's all I use. I have a brewbucket primary and those like Primo-Water 5 gallon blue jugs from walmart/lowes. I've never bulk aged in them exactly but I had some that insisted on bubbling slowly for like 4 or 5 months.

I'm a science teacher so I'm going to swipe a dissolved oxygen test kit, boil the oxygen out of 5 gallons of water, seal it up in one of those jugs with a bung and airlock and test it a year later. See what I get.
 
A test would be nice. It's always good to know the real science behind what we do rather than just trial and error opinion. The PVC bottle didn't have an odor on the outside, but a pretty strong one when I took the cap off and smelled the "inner" air. Since you've had some with wine in for 4-5 months, did you notice any off-flavors? More than oxygen permeating the bottle, I'm worried about chemicals leaching out of the plastic. Maybe there's no BPA, but there could be other bad things. Any idea about that?
 
I have used 4 plastic water bottles for a year. I had my first batch that tasted like plastic. Probably 3 wine kits over a year. I racked and tossed all of my plastic water bottles.
 
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