Santa's choice of homebrew gear

Ok, so I posted in the keg forum about Santa bringing me a corny keg...Totally happy. My sister in law also got me one...So now I have 4 total which is what I wanted. She also got me a 6 gal glass carboy. So here is my problem. All of my carboys are BBs, and I have been totally happy with them....They are 5 gal, and I have two. I was actually planning on getting one more so I would have a total of 3 BBs. My question is.....Should I keep the 6 gal glass and use it for a primary? Trade it in on a 6.5 gal glass for a Primary, trade it for a 6.5 gal bucket for a primary, or trade it for a 5 gal BB for a secondary? I just dont know if its more need to have more secondarys, or two primarys....What are your opinions? Feel free to tell your opinions on glass vs BB also...Im still undecided on that whole thing, but I do love BBs...

I'll take a shot at this. I started with plastic buckets, had four glass carboys at one time and now do all my fermentation, clearing and serving in SS cornys, except for stuff that needs to sit a real long time still gets bottled.

Don't buy any more plastic, plastic sucks. It is cheap, and works good for a while, but once your bucket has a scratch you'll never get the bugs out of the scratch. It is OK to have one or two around to use for other things.

Glass kicks butt as a fermenter. It isn't temperature tolerant, and the handles are NFG, but you don't have to worry about oxygen permeability and you can see what is going on in there. Glass is very difficult to scratch while cleaning and very easy to disinfect as well. Keep one 5gal going with EW's Afelwine, keep the six gal you got as a primary and replace your other two 5gal glass with two more cornies as you can afford it. If you are remotely interested in meads, keep the "other" two 5 gal glass so you can rack your mead back and forth.

Now that you are kegging anyway, look at conditioning and eventually fermenting in cornies. wortmonger has a thread going in the general techniques section. the title has to do with running your primamry ferment under pressure so your session beer carbs as it ferments, but you could put an open hose end on a grey post, open end under water and bang, you have a fermenter.

Along the way you could primary in glass while conditioning/ priming in kegs.

Having searched a lot of threads lately, I will say that if you are going to bottle "some" of a batch for shipment or sharing, you might as well *I am expressing an opinion* bottle the whole batch. There are a few folks here counter pressure filling bottles with consistently good results, but not everyone.

M2c

EDIT: I gave all of my glass to my brother in law the wine maker about 12hours ago. I don't miss it. I now have one kind of container in my brewery. I got 5 gallon cornies. They are either clean and topped with CO2, or clean and full of 'something', or they need to be cleaned. They all get cleaned the same way, with the same chemicals yada, yada, I am in hog heaven.

Use what you got(blow off tubes for sure).You'll use more secondary's than primarys and btw you're gonna need more cornies .
Cheers

I would like more cornys, but space is an issue right now...Gotta keep SWMBO happy......Im trying to take it slow so maybe she wont notice how much stuff is taking over the laundry room(the brewery)....Thats where all my stuff is stored, and where my primarys and secondarys hang out while they are on the job The temperature is pretty constant at 68 degrees. Im still torn about the Carboy....Still might trade it in on another Better Bottle...

Sounds like you have been using the 5 gallon BB as your primary, correct? If so, are you adjusting your volume or just dealing with the lack of headspace when fermenting?

You can read through all of the BB vs glass, carboy vs bucket discussion elsewhere and decide for yourself what makes the most sense in your situation.

Why not trade it for a 6 gallon BB that you can use as a primary?

brewt00l said:

Sounds like you have been using the 5 gallon BB as your primary, correct? If so, are you adjusting your volume or just dealing with the lack of headspace when fermenting?

You can read through all of the BB vs glass, carboy vs bucket discussion elsewhere and decide for yourself what makes the most sense in your situation.

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Naw, Im using a 6.5 gal bucket for a primary.....Im just a little gunshy about glass after hearing some of the stories on this site about broken carboys, and cut up arms..

Liquidicem said:

Why not trade it for a 6 gallon BB that you can use as a primary?

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That is a possiblity.....Im going to my LHBS tonight...One of my new(used) cornys isnt holding pressure....It came with a rebuild kit, but he also sells junk ones really cheap for parts and I want to make sure my brother in law didnt grab one of those by mistake..(and because it was a lot cheaper than the rest sitting there)....

One more question....If you use a carboy for a primary, do you keep it covered up so no light gets in there?

To prevent broken glass and shredded body parts, just keep your carboy inside of a standard milk crate. It should fit snugly and give you bonus handles.

splat said:

One more question....If you use a carboy for a primary, do you keep it covered up so no light gets in there?

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You'll only need to do that if it will come in direct contact with sunlight or other UV light. If it's just in a basement or room with only artificial lighting it won't be a problem.

Otherwise, yeah you should. Use either an old shirt or a brown paper sack (cut a hold in the bottom and slide it over the neck of the carboy).