carboy size?

noob questions here, sorry but since the wine section does not have the abundance of stiky posts answering stuff like this i gotta ask. If for now my wine making will stay exclusive 2 kits, and each kit makes 6gal, will a 6.5g carboy be sufficient? I do not want to use plastic if i can help it. will that do or do i need bigger?

you need more space for a 6 gal kit, you need at least 7 gal of space. Why are you avoiding plastic? It doesn't make a difference in your wine.

You really need about 7 to an 8 gallon bucket for primary then you NEED a 6 gallon carboy. I did my first wine in my 6.5 gallon brew bucket and it was way to close to the top for comfort but it worked. Also during primary, you usually do not seal it off with an airlock as the yeast actually needs Oxygen. Some people go as far as to stir and introduce O2 for the first few days. Putting it in a carboy probably wouldn't be a good idea.

Secondary:
Your wine has to be topped off (generally) after primary fermentation. So you would need to add .5 gallons of some similar finished wine to top it off in a 6.5 gallon carboy. I wouldn't want to risk a kit by having too much head space.

good luck

Ok some background is needed. I am a beer brewer. i have two 7 gal plastic ferm buckets and a 5 gal carboy for my beer, my buddy has an equipment kit coming in with ?????? not sure all it has other than a 6.5gal carboy. I know how easily they get scratched and how important sanitation is(plastic buckets). I am starting wine with a buddy of mine who is dead against plastic no matter what I say. So therefore if i cannot convince him to go plastic, is the gerneral concensus that i need to have him/us buy a 15gal demijon for fementation? Stainless connical? LOL I thought I had all my equipment purchased.

No, the general concensus is to use a 8 gallon plastic fermenting pail and a 6 gallon glass or plastic carboy.

The kit will have both, most likely.

Sanitation is pretty easy in a plastic bucket, don't know what the issue is????

This issue is his refusal to go plastic whatever his reason is. Hell it took me 2.5 years to get off his wallet and go this far. I'm sure it will take me another 2.5 to get him to use plastic fermentors.

tchuklobrau said:

This issue is his refusal to go plastic whatever his reason is. Hell it took me 2.5 years to get off his wallet and go this far. I'm sure it will take me another 2.5 to get him to use plastic fermentors.

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Good luck.

If he is the one refusing to go with plastic, you should make HIM pay for the Demi. Bottom line, he wants something that is easily three times the price of what he needs. You chip in your $10 (about the price of half a bucket) and make him pay the rest.

FWIW- We use buckets or even (sanitized) garbage cans for small fermentation at a professional winery. This year we had a huge issue with space (biggest harvest ever) so we had to improvise. The wine wasn't hurt, and it is turning out to be some of the best wine the winery has ever made.

Lol well the demi does give me the ability to do a 10 gal batch of beer. so i dont mind paying for half of it.

if you don't want to spend more cash can't you just downsize the ingredients a little to match your fermenter or split the batch in half?

your friend probably doesn't want to use plastic for this reason:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/bpa-hazard-myth-172188/

i personally wouldn't buy wine if i knew it was made in trash cans - too many chemicals leech from plastics, even food grade.

Well, that is a myth. If we sent off a sample of wine for analysis and nothing came up, I would think it would be fine. Also. If you don't think food safe plastics are safe, good luck buying groceries.

One more thing. Neither the plastic buckets nor the food safe garbage bins (used in manufacturing just about everything) are clear. No BPA was used to clear the plastic.

WIP said:

Well, that is a myth. If we sent off a sample of wine for analysis and nothing came up, I would think it would be fine. Also. If you don't think food safe plastics are safe, good luck buying groceries.

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WIP said:

One more thing. Neither the plastic buckets nor the food safe garbage bins (used in manufacturing just about everything) are clear. No BPA was used to clear the plastic.

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its not a myth:

"Biomonitoring surveys by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found BPA in the bodies of a stunning 93% of all Americans over the age of 6. Interestingly, in light of the recent findings with paper receipts, EWG analysis of the CDC data has found that people who reported working in retail industries had 30 percent more BPA in their bodies than the average U.S. adult, and 34 percent more BPA than other workers.

http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/BisphenolA_FactSheet.html

i didn't mean to sound like i was attacking your products. personally i do try to stay away from as much plastic as possible, but as you mentioned - good luck! BPA is in everything from plastic bottles to thermal receipt paper to canned goods liners. If it is not BPA, plastics are leeching chemicals all the time, even if miniscule amounts.
All that being said, i know the FDA approves all that and that is the problem - there are "allowable limits" to all kinds of toxic stuff. i'm sure your wine tastes great.

I think what I meant was that there is most likely no BPA in the fermenting buckets. They are not clear so no BPA was used to clear the plastic, and the buckets are #2 plastic, not #7.

you are probably correct about BPA but my point was that all plastics leach.

http://www.medicinenet.com/plastic/page2.htm

What is high-density polyethylene (HDPE)?
High-density polyethylene (HDPE) is used to make many types of bottles. HDPE has good barrier properties; it's well suited for packaging products with a short shelf life and has good chemical resistance. It is identified with the number 2. HDPE is used in milk, juice, and water bottles along with household items such as shampoo, conditioner, detergent, cleaners, motor oil, and antifreeze. It can also be found in pipe, tiles, plastic film and sheeting, buckets, crates, and recycling bins.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pen.10259/abstract

Abstract
The use of synthetic pipes for drinking water distribution has increased. High desnity polyethylene (HPDE) is preferred because of its favorable mechanical properties, ease of handling during manufacturing, and low permeability to external contaminants. Off-flavor drinking water is a problem with plastic pipes. The compounds causing off-flavors are mainly carbonyl compounds. A combined zeolite called Abscents is used to eliminate odors and to remove odor-causing compounds. In this study, four different amounts of Abscents were added to raw HDPE pellets, and the influence on the off-flavor properties were analyzed. When the maximum amount of Abscents was added, almost all the carbonyl compounds disappeared, and the intensities of odors also decreased. The use of Abscents notably increased the acceptability of HDPE pipes.

http://http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-method-to-detect-dangerous-carbonyl-compounds-010611.aspx

Carbonyl compounds from motor vehicle and industrial emissions are precursors to ground-level ozone, a major component of smog, and are strongly associated with respiratory and pulmonary problems. They are also found in food and drinking water and various indoor living and working environments. Formaldehyde, a common indoor pollutant, is released from numerous sources including plywood, furniture, paper products, glues, cosmetics, tobacco smoke and many others. Formaldehyde and acetaldehyde have been classified as probable or known human carcinogens by regulatory agencies including the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and International Agency of Cancer Research (IARC).

tchuklobrau said:

noob questions here, sorry but since the wine section does not have the abundance of stiky posts answering stuff like this i gotta ask. If for now my wine making will stay exclusive 2 kits, and each kit makes 6gal, will a 6.5g carboy be sufficient? I do not want to use plastic if i can help it. will that do or do i need bigger?

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just in case your mind isn't made up yet, I've been using the 6.5 gal carboys for the 6 gallon kits. NEVER have I had a problem, I've made over 2000 bottles of wine this way.

Use that money on more ingredients.