carboy or pail?

For a primary do you use a pale or carboy? if carboy how do you get all the funk out?

soap/water/brush

Primary for beer, Better Bottle for Apfelwein. Clean immedialty after use. Hot tap water rinse, followed by hot soak with PBW or a cold water soak with Oxiclean for a day or two. Works great.

Glass all the way. Lots of brewers have very strong opinions on this, but I think glass is the best way to go. PBW is your best friend. Overnight soak and anything that doesn't float off is easily removed with a quick brush. I like the turbo-scrubber - quick and easy.

Prosit!

Better Bottles are fantastic, and they pretty much clean themselves if you fill them up with Oxyclean and rinse a couple of times.

Plastic primaries...quick rinse after racking, add very little bleach, fill to top with water and let sit overnight. Very little to clean off come morning...

I use glass carboys as primaries and no secondary. It's fun to watch the magic happen in glass. I clean ASAP and rinse out really well with hot water, and scrub with a carboy brush. The toughest part is the kreusen line. I then fill with tap water and let sit at least overnight. When I empty it out, I check to make sure the carboy is free of all residue. When I use it again, I usually give it a rinse with tap water-then a gallon of one-step solution.

It's a lot more fun to use clear carboys for primary (so that you can watch "the show") but I use plastic buckets because it's SO much easier to clean the krausen ring. Carboy brushes are a PITA, especially if you don't clean the carboy out immediately after racking. Plastic for primary, carboy for secondary.

Glass carboys for everything. Oxy-clean or PBW gets anything off.

Buckets all the way.

I have all but given away my carboys. Primary and then straight to keg.

That'll change if I ever decide to add fruit or veggies to a beer

Glass carboys, wash right after racking, soak for 20-30 minutes with OxyClean.

I'd probably go with better bottles if I was buying them. But so far 3 carboys have been given to me as a gift, and 1 came with the original kit I got..

Anyone want to trade

For beer, I primary in plastic pails and secondary in Better Bottles.

I have two glass carboys, a 6.5 gallon and a 5 gallon. I might sell them both or keep them for mead, I can't decide.

I use oxyclean for cleaning. To clean gunk out of a carboy or Better Bottle, I put a washcloth in and swirl it around with a small amount of water. Does the trick every time. Sometimes overnight soaking with oxyclean helps, too.

I primary in buckets and either got straight to kegs or a glass secondary.

Since I am doing small boil PMs and cooling in the sink. Its a lot easier to pour from a pot into a bucket then it is through a funnel.

If I switch to a counterflow chiller I might start using carboys for primaries too, but who knows.

Bucket to better bottle, or bucket to carboy, depending on what's open. Or bucket directly to my one corny keg, if that's open.

Way easier to clean buckets!

I have a mix. 5 buckets, 2 glass carboy and 2 betterbottles. The buckets are so easy to clean and they stack when not in use. I still like the glass for secondarys, but are a pita to clean. And I dont have space for more carboys when not in use. The buckets dont add any floor space in storage.

Primary in bucket, secondary in glass carboy.

I don't use "Bleach" in buckets ever because it's smell and residues are hard to rinse out. PBW and Starsan is all you ever need.

I have a bucket but I have only used it once, and didn't like it. I do nothing but carboys for primaries and secondaries.

It just occurred to me that this would be a perfect compliment to this thread:

I use a 6.5 gal carboy for primary all the time. I will either fill it all the way up with warm/hot water and oxyclean and let it sit overnight, or fill it up 1/3 of the way and flip it over in a bucket to let the cleaner work on the Krausen ring (both of these after I rinse out the yeast/slurry at the bottom) I often don't even need a carboy brush, but I've used it at times.