The yeast don't care....It's all about what YOU prefer.
I use plastic.
Extremely unpopular I gather, but I vote for Stainless steel stock pots. If your not bothered about an airlock they are great. cheap, almost indistructable, last a lifetime, boilable, scrubable, droppable -havent tried this so far but if one dents you can go back to the first point - cheap enough to replace if dropped. You can get any size imaginable, many aspect ratios to fit your fermenter area/fridge. they have welded on handles so you wont drop them anyway. you can whip off the lid and skim yeast or add dry hops really easy. You can drill a hole and add a spigot.
I added a spigot and now can use it for a temporary HLT store since my kettle doubles as a HLT and I need storage in another vessel whilst i'm pumping first runnings into the kettle. I have a quick connect on it the same as for my kettle and mash tun spigot, so when the boil has finished I can simply drain from kettle to fermenter via spigots and keep my fermenter lid on.
Only downside, no airlock - although you may be able to manufacture some kind of gasket for the lid and drill a hole in the lid for an airlock. I dont bother for primary.
You cant see the wort fermenting. I have seen it before in glass carboys and now its not as interesting to me. I can gauge activity by lifting the lid a bit.
Forgot to mention, very light weight if you get thin walled/base ones. slightly lighter than glass I would think.
What about wild yeast infection in a plastic bucket?
I use... wait, how did I answer this in the last post that asked... umm... plastic!
I've used both and much prefer the safety, light weight, and ease of cleaning plastic buckets. I've never noticed a difference in quality.
What about wild yeast infection in a plastic bucket?
Glass will last forever if you care for it properly.
Must in stainless such as if doing a fruit wine, etc. Beyond that I use glass for carboys and bottles. Though after now hearing some of the stories of them breaking it makes me think I should wear welding gloves when handling them maybe. I saw the better bottles at the LHBS but they weren't much cheaper than glass and I just can't bring myself to like plastic for food/drink applications.
Take a look in your refrigerator. I bet half the stuff in there is in plastic containers!
I have some Winware SS pots I got from Amazon, i think those could be used as fermenters pretty easily. The lids fit very tightly onto the pot. If you could find the right size flat o-ring and maybe use a bunch of little c clamps on it, I think it would secure on there pretty nicely.
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