Thinking about switching to Better Bottles

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EzMak24

EzMak24

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Currently I am a glass carboy guy but I am thinking about switching to better bottles. I now have the ability to control the ambient temperature around my wort but the walls of the glass carboy insulate the wort and any heat increase caused by the yeast fermentation seems to hang around for a while. The plastic walls of the better bottle should exchange heat much better giving me a more consistant fermemnting temperature.

Just thought I would share my thoughts with everyone.
 
The PET bottles do let in oxygen, despite their claim. They should be fine for regular ale fermenting but I wouldn't lager in them. The PET shouldn't insulate as well as glass. The glass carboy will hold temperature longer than the PET and in my experience trying PET, the unit turned on more often using PET carboys than with glass. Also remember ambient temperature doesn't matter as much at liquid temperature.
 
Weizenwerks said:
The PET bottles do let in oxygen, despite their claim. They should be fine for regular ale fermenting but I wouldn't lager in them. The PET shouldn't insulate as well as glass. The glass carboy will hold temperature longer than the PET and in my experience trying PET, the unit turned on more often using PET carboys than with glass. Also remember ambient temperature doesn't matter as much at liquid temperature.
Click to expand...

But how much? I've yet to see a citation re: how much 02 is let in, and any effect on the beer is going to be directly relevant to the amount of oxidation. Until some definitive study is done on this (and I certainly haven't run across one), I think the leakiness of PETE to oxygen must remain an anecdotal (unproven) matter. My anecdote: I used glass carboys for my first year and a half of brewing. When I use a carboy now (I pretty much primary-only in buckets now) it's generally for extended aging, and I use BBs. Can't tell any difference.....
 
I switched to BB from glass after a fellow brewer had a bottle shatter and cut his leg to ribbons, when I brew a lager I simply rack to a keg after the d-rest and dropping to lager temp, then it just sits in the back of the kegerator until it is ready. I let most of my lagers go 6 months or so before serving. No oxidized beer yet!
 
rico567 said:
But how much? I've yet to see a citation re: how much 02 is let in, and any effect on the beer is going to be directly relevant to the amount of oxidation. Until some definitive study is done on this (and I certainly haven't run across one), I think the leakiness of PETE to oxygen must remain an anecdotal (unproven) matter. My anecdote: I used glass carboys for my first year and a half of brewing. When I use a carboy now (I pretty much primary-only in buckets now) it's generally for extended aging, and I use BBs. Can't tell any difference.....
Click to expand...
I think the PET is something like 1 dram of oxygen per square inch per day. My friend's father works for Pepsi Bottling in the packaging line. I'll check with him for the definitive. PET, the same type of plastic Better Bottles are made of, are also used for the soda bottles.
 
What I like about Better Bottles is the hump at the bottom of the bottle. When I rack to my bottling keg I just set my auto-siphon on the hump and transfer away. No need for cloth at the siphon bottom and practicably no trub being siphon out of the primary.
 

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