Found a Crack in a Full Carboy

The carboy is brand new so I am not sure how it go there, but after inspecting my carboy on day 2 of fermentation I noticed a small vertical crack (about 2 inches) connected to a smaller horizontal crack (about 1/2 inch) along the bottom third of the carboy. As best I can tell it doesn't appear to be leaking, so I covered the area in duct tape and put the carboy in a plastic tote in case it does leak.

My question is how worried should I be able contamination since it still has at least another week and a half of fermentation. Also aside from duct tape is there anything better I can do to prevent the crack from spreading/leaking?

Is it an actual crack, or could it be just an imperfection in the glass?

as soon as i read the title, in my head im thinking Duct tape. you will prolly be alright with contamination as long as you cleaned it really well and sanitized it to begin with.

no idea about how to keep it from cracking more. maybe some glass to plastic epoxy with a thin peice of plastic.

You can tap on the container with a small metal object and tell if it is a crack --- the sound will change, kind of like a loose floor tile sound.

I still have one 6 gallon glass container --- but I went plastic a few years back and feel better. I had one break on me when I was cleaning it and could not believe how thin the glass was.

CastleHollow said:

Is it an actual crack, or could it be just an imperfection in the glass?

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I am fairly sure it's a crack as it seems to have some depth to it.

oldstyle69 said:

as soon as i read the title, in my head im thinking Duct tape. you will prolly be alright with contamination as long as you cleaned it really well and sanitized it to begin with.

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That's kind of what I was thinking.

Butchv12 said:

I still have one 6 gallon glass container --- but I went plastic a few years back and feel better. I had one break on me when I was cleaning it and could not believe how thin the glass was.

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I think after this I will be switching to plastic, at least for primary. Currently I do my actually brewing somewhere else, at my parent's house, and take the fermenter back to my apartment. I am thinking it got cracked somewhere along the way.

If it's cracked, trash it. Not worth the risk of it breaking on you and cutting you up and dumping 5 gallons all over your floor.

BadNewsBrewery said:

If it's cracked, trash it. Not worth the risk of it breaking on you and cutting you up and dumping 5 gallons all over your floor.

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I will definitely be trashing it after this, but I don't want to give up on this brew just yet. I put it in a large plastic tote, so if it does break it should spare my floor, hopefully lol.

Oh, definitely. Don't give up the beer that's in there - but once you've transferred it, I wouldn't even bother with cleaning - just dump it straight in the trash (recycling?) and consider it a loss.

Broken Glass Brewing? Cracked Glass Cellars? You've got a beer name in there somewhere.

Butchv12 said:

You can tap on the container with a small metal object and tell if it is a crack --- the sound will change,

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ha, yep, it will make the sound of splashing wort and broken glass if you are not careful.

I like my better bottle, and my 7.5 gallon pail even better. I've left beers 5 weeks in the pail and went straight to keg and they turned out great. In a 5 to 6 gallon batch there's enough head space so I hardly ever get blow off, and the lid makes it soooo easy to clean. Mine has a hole near the bottom that I use the better bottle racking valve in so I don't even have to start a syphon when I transfer to keg. Safe, effective, and easy to clean. Oh and I almost forgot, they're cheap too!!!

Just the tilte of this thread makes me worry. Transfer beer out and toss into a dumpster. Make sure you break it, so no one else thinks it is a good idea to re-use it. Cheers

Don't touch it again until you rack out of it. I wouldn't think about moving it, even if you lifted only the tote you have it in. As soon as its empty, trash it.

Yes, I'm chicken little. But I'll be the bore and post this link once again. OP, please have a look.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/broken-glass-carboy-horror-stories-compendium-376523/

Internal or external crack? if it is internal there is obviously a greater chance of infection. I echo the suggestions of not risking a cracked carboy, though if it is brand new I would consider contacting the parties you bought it from and mention the crack unless you mishandled it.

I also would do anything I could to avoid picking it up. Many years back I had the same type thing happen and had the bottom fall out when I picked it up.

Scarey...

Is tape the crap out of that entire carboy before I tried to move it and when I did I pick it straight up and have someone slide a milk crate under it and set it down in the crate.

I think your beer should be fine tho.

I am of the opinion that, as long as you don't break the thing, you'll be fine.

Infection? From where? If you sanitized the carboy inside to begin with, what's going to infect the beer? I can't imagine that this crack goes all the way through the glass enough to let air in, else it would have broken by now. Heck, even if you HAD air leaking, how would that be different that the thousands of people who use plastic buckets with leaky seals? CO2 pressure will keep oxygen from entering the primary.

Nothing's coming in, OP. Relax. Be careful with this carboy, and all will be fine.

homebrewdad said:

I am of the opinion that, as long as you don't break the thing, you'll be fine.

Infection? From where? If you sanitized the carboy inside to begin with, what's going to infect the beer? I can't imaging that this crack goes all the way through the glass enough to let air in, else it would have broken by now. Heck, even if you HAD air leaking, how would that be different that the thousands of people who use plastic buckets with leaky seals? CO2 pressure will keep oxygen from entering the primary.

Nothing's coming in, OP. Relax. Be careful with this carboy, and all will be fine.

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Agreed. I think the fear of glass carboys around here is getting old. It's a crack, he took the proper precautions to put it in a tote to make it safer to carry, catch the beer if it does fail. I would let it ride. When you are done with this batch you make your own decision to toss the carboy or not.

Channel66 said:

Agreed. I think the fear of glass carboys around here is getting old. It's a crack, he took the proper precautions to put it in a tote to make it safer to carry, catch the beer if it does fail. I would let it ride. When you are done with this batch you make your own decision to toss the carboy or not.

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I'm with you. I think that the anti-glass position sometimes strays into hysterical territory. Be careful (which the OP is doing). It'll be fine.

The infection worriers get me, too. What's going to infect this beer? Devils from the inner thickness of the glass?

I think everyone scared of infection should visit the wild brewing forums here. There are hundreds of threads there of people TRYING to catch infections in their beer many of whom throw away all sanitizing precautions, open ferment in places that would make you go eck. Many of whom are unsuccessful at catching a real infection.

RDWHAHB folks.

Channel66 said:

I think everyone scared of infection should visit the wild brewing forums here. There are hundreds of threads there of people TRYING to catch infections in their beer many of whom throw away all sanitizing precautions, open ferment in places that would make you go eck. Many of whom are unsuccessful at catching a real infection.

RDWHAHB folks.

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Agreed. I'm not stating that sanitation isn't necesary - it of course is - but how many "is it infected?" threads per week do we get compared to the actual number of infections?

Now, I could see the argument that using a cracked fermenter would increase your risks of infection on future batches, as it would be difficult/impossible to sanitize that irregular surface. You might get a leftover bit from a past batch that grows something in between batches.

But infections don't just magically appear. If the OP gets an infection in his cracked carboy, it's due to some other sanitation issue - i.e. a coincidence. The crack has nothing to do with this batch, aside from the obvious risk of a dying carboy.

just had something similar happen to me: i was swirling a carboy to rouse the yeast when i swirled too widely, hit another carboy, and caused a small round chip to fly off it. the hole was below the beer level so beer started leaking straight our of the carboy. looked like the carboy was peeing. i immediately tipped the carboy to put the hole above the beer level, rigged up some nearby wood blocks to hold the carboy in that tilted position, sanitized a small piece of cling-wrap, covered the hole, then duct-tapped the entire area. some air might have gotten in, but not a lot. i'll be bottling this batch soon and then recycling the carboy.

it's my own stupid fault that this happened. i was lucky that a small hole is the only thing that happened. i could have lost the whole batch. the beer gods are smiling upon me... thank you, beer fairies.

I wouldn't worry about infection from a small crack in the carboy. I would worry though about being seriously injured or spilling 5+ gallons of beer on your floors from handling the damaged carboy. My advice would be to let the fermentation ride, transfer to a bottling bucket/keg, then throw the carboy away. Do not even be tempted to keep it or "see what happens". Glass has a lot of good advantages over plastic but it can seriously injure and even kill you if that carboy decides to shatter while you're are handling it. If you do decide to handle it while it's full make sure your wife or someone is home with you in case something does happen. Better safe than sorry.

TurnX said:

The carboy is brand new so I am not sure how it go there, but after inspecting my carboy on day 2 of fermentation I noticed a small vertical crack (about 2 inches) connected to a smaller horizontal crack (about 1/2 inch) along the bottom third of the carboy.

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I had a thought, and since this is the beginners forum, just a reminder: Stress fractures can happen easily if there is a significant temperature differential on the glass. Make sure you don't dump hot wort directly into a cold carboy. Cool your wort as best you can, and always make sure you have top-off water already in the carboy when you dump your wort.

CastleHollow said:

I had a thought, and since this is the beginners forum, just a reminder: Stress fractures can happen easily if there is a significant temperature differential on the glass. Make sure you don't dump hot wort directly into a cold carboy. Cool your wort as best you can, and always make sure you have top-off water already in the carboy when you dump your wort.

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I was once a noob. I lost a glass carboy exactly like this.

I was also once a newb and I melted a plastic carboy once by pouring in too hot wort.

homebrewdad said:

I'm with you. I think that the anti-glass position sometimes strays into hysterical territory. Be careful (which the OP is doing). It'll be fine.

The infection worriers get me, too. What's going to infect this beer? Devils from the inner thickness of the glass?

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Even though I put that link up above, I'm not a anti-glass zealot. Just be careful with the stuff. As many times as it gets mentioned around here, people still swing those things around like they are unbreakable. Everyone should keep them in a milk crate.

When I was a kid everyone cut the seat belts out of their cars because only pu$$ys wore them. People get smarter, but first they have to see the possible consequences of their insouciance.

My favorite destroyed carboy... In my early days of brewing, I had a batch that was going to be my first lager. I had cooled the wort somewhat, but it wasn't anywhere near where it should. I let it sit in my buddy's garage while we brewed his batch. After, it was cool to the touch but still not where I wanted, so I came up with the genious idea to stick it in a cool water bath - his outdoor in ground hot tub (that was off).

Put the carboy in, no issues. Just as I gently set it on the step, that slight shock set it off and I heard a crack. Yanked up on the handle, but the bottom of the carboy stayed in the tub and I watched 5.5 gallons of wort effortlessly slide into his hot tub.

Needless to say, the evening was filled with sump pumps and vacuuming and lots of cursing.

Thanks for all the helpful replies!

The infection concern was a minor one, I have yet to see an infected batch no matter how careful/careless I have been but this is my first time with a carboy so I wasn't sure how that factored in. As far as how it cracked, I assume it was at some point in transporting it to my apartment. I was smart enough, this time anyway, to cool my wort before I put it in there.

At this point the duct tape seems to be working nicely, so as long as there are no surprises the beer goes into secondary in 1.5 weeks and this carboy is going into the trash. Next time I am going to start with plastic to avoid any transportation issues.

Call this batch "Side Crack Pale Ale" and toss that beotch after fermentation

BadNewsBrewery said:

My favorite destroyed carboy... In my early days of brewing, I had a batch that was going to be my first lager. I had cooled the wort somewhat, but it wasn't anywhere near where it should. I let it sit in my buddy's garage while we brewed his batch. After, it was cool to the touch but still not where I wanted, so I came up with the genious idea to stick it in a cool water bath - his outdoor in ground hot tub (that was off).

Put the carboy in, no issues. Just as I gently set it on the step, that slight shock set it off and I heard a crack. Yanked up on the handle, but the bottom of the carboy stayed in the tub and I watched 5.5 gallons of wort effortlessly slide into his hot tub.

Needless to say, the evening was filled with sump pumps and vacuuming and lots of cursing.

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I did EXACTLY the same thing on the first step of my pool. Lifted it and it seemed really light. Then I realized the base of the carboy was not attached.

Sounds like you have it uner control, OP. Good luck - let us know how it turns out!