Question on secondary fermentation vessel

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vlodko62

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Oct 22, 2010
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Saint Paul, MN
I'm brewing my very first beer - a brown ale. Everything seems to be going well - a buddy of mine and I racked it to secondary on Thursday night. For the secondary fermentation, I used a five-gallon plastic water bottle from my bubbler. Cleaned and sanitized it with Star San - racking went well.

On Saturday, I popped into one of the local homebrew stores to browse, and spoke with one of the guys there. He was concerned that the plastic water bottle might not be a good idea, and that it might not be the same grade of plastic used in the "Better Bottle" system.

Question: was he just trying to sell me a carboy, or is using the water bottle going to harm my beer in any way?

Thanks!
 
If you read a lot here you will see that secondaries are not used by many of the people on here.
 
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I believe Better Bottles are #1, PETE. Plastic bucket fermenters are #2, HDPE. I'm also pretty sure that #5, PP, is food safe. I do know that my 5 gallon plastic water bottles (which I don't use for beer making) are #7. When classified as 'other' who really knows if they are food safe or not. I'm sure that if they are made to hold water then they are relatively safe. But you never know about the slightly acidic nature of wort. There is also some discussion as to whether they are oxygen permeable or not.
 
Thanks for the info, guys! I checked, and the bottle I'm using is labeled #1. It's funny, because most of the other bottles I've got kicking around the house are #7. I picked this one because it looked newer and cleaner than the others.
 
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