Why plastic fermenters are better than glass carboys

Tonight water pipelinie at my street broke, and it made major flood in my cellar - water 5 feet deep! I had there 5 batches fermenting and lagering in plastic buckets - over 100L of beer! I taught it is all lost, but when I managed to open the door, it turned out that they gracefully float on the surface, with airlocks on.
The only damage is a temperature contoller, I think electronics will not survive the bath.

Wow you were lucky, even plastic buckets can tip over.

That's funny... I can only imagine...

Your cellar is flooded but your first reaction is - "F#%@ my Beer!"

Classic Sir - Glad everything turned out ok...

Piotr said:

Tonight water pipelinie at my street broke, and it made major flood in my cellar - water 5 feet deep! I had there 5 batches fermenting and lagering in plastic buckets - over 100L of beer! I taught it is all lost, but when I managed to open the door, it turned out that they gracefully float on the surface, with airlocks on.

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Pics or you're lying!

StunnedMonkey said:

Pics or you're lying!

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Sorry - I din't feel like making pictures standig up to chest in 40F water. I fished out my babies and ran to hot shower

At least I'm not the only one who has they priorities staright- Good luck on the cleanup

If your electronics were not turned on when the water hit them, they probably survived, just make sure they are dry before you try again,...

Your story does put tragi-comic pictures in my head

walther said:

If your electronics were not turned on when the water hit them, they probably survived, just make sure they are dry before you try again,...

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+1; Clean'em good with rubbing alcohol and blow dry.

(Cat dumped mug of coffee INTO my PC through blow hole on top... Called off work and after a day of tedious cleaning it's all better...)

if the main broke in the street you can and should file a claim against the town or the water authority homeowners does not cover flooding

springer said:

if the main broke in the street you can and should file a claim against the town or the water authority homeowners does not cover flooding

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The OP is in Poland.

Nicely done!! You are making us all proud of you!

It's really a shame you didn't get pics. This is totally classic.

944play said:

The OP is in Poland.

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Should look at location before posting..

Actually, taking pictures is the first thing I would have done, for insurance/legal purposes.

I agree about the controller...you might be surprised. I'd rinse it with distilled water, and let it sit in a warm dry place until it was bone dry.

springer said:

if the main broke in the street you can and should file a claim against the town or the water authority homeowners does not cover flooding

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Ours sure did during Katrina in the house in Metairie.

But, I have some extra insurance on all my music equipment. It covers flooding unless it's in a basement. lol

Flood insurance is such a scam!! We had major flooding in the spring and flood insurance basically covers . . . . . nothing. FEMA came though with some cash though.

Sorry - had to vent.

Your story does have me thinking of putting little life vests on my carboys though.

Wow that is cool you were able to save your brew. I'm curious now if a glass carboy with a 3 piece airlock would stand up to being under water (I'm also not sure if it would float or not with 1.5 gallons of headspace)

conpewter said:

Wow that is cool you were able to save your brew. I'm curious now if a glass carboy with a 3 piece airlock would stand up to being under water (I'm also not sure if it would float or not with 1.5 gallons of headspace)

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I suppose you could probably plan for something like this by running vinyl tubing from the airlock output up to anchors in the ceiling. Then if it flooded, the carboys would probably stay on the bottom, but they could keep fermenting without any adverse affects (except, perhaps, temperature).

Of course, I don't think this happens regularly enough anywhere to plan for it...

Ah but could you use this to your advantage if you lived near a large lake and you didn't want to run a refrigerator to lager... The bottom of those lakes are pretty cold.