Broken Glass Carboy Horror Stories Compendium

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Wow, scary, at the same time, as mentioned above, the right PPE and lifting these things from the bottom and not having so much stress in the neck is probably good enough for mitigation.

My carboys were manufactures in Italy and they are pretty thick. These ones that are described as a "spontaneous combustion" type design are probably super thin.

Mine are all thick Italians too. Hopefully they hold together because I love using them. Anytime I move them I plan ahead. I lock all of my animals out of the area I'm using and make sure no one is home.
 
Mine are all thick Italians too. Hopefully they hold together because I love using them. Anytime I move them I plan ahead. I lock all of my animals out of the area I'm using and make sure no one is home.

Change the forum, but leave the post the same and you might get some rather interesting responses. You definitely need context here.
 
My first and hopefully last......

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Whenever I see passedpawn at the top of my subscribed threads list I get a shiver.
 
Aerator wand. I've used it for eight years now without a issue. This was operator error. Luckily pride was the only thing hurt.
 
And the moral to THIS story is..... (drum roll)....

DON'T BREAK YOUR CARBOYS.....

I have eight 6 gallon carboys, and one 3 gallon carboy. Have had them for over 10 years and no mishaps....

Now watch, I'll break one tomorrow. EEK!!!!!

Seriously... hate to see all of that. Has to really suck. Hope everyone healed properly.
 
I considered using glass carboys but decided against it mostly due to the fact that I brew on the main floor of our house (now E-BIAB in the garage), but my fermenter fridge is down in our little 10x20 basement. The thought of of what might happen while toting a full glass carboy down a flight of outside concrete stairs is frightening.
 
2nd hand story. Buddy is living Final Destination. haha.

A buddy broke his 2ND carboy last weekend without injury. He still won't get rid of the rest of his glass. Both that broke were old blue glass water jugs, and the rest of his are new brew carboys, but damn.

EDIT: Same buddy as my previous post.

This one just fractured up the side after filling it with chilled wort. It was the last of 6 batches over the last several days filling his last carboy. I got a frantic call at 11:30pm that his beer was leaking out and he needed to borrow a carboy. I told him he had to come get it. When he got there I offered an autosiphon, and he tried to tell me he was going to lift this full, cracked carboy onto a counter to gravity feed. I told him he was taking the autosiphon, and transferring it where it sat or I was disowning him. I wasn't there to see how he cracked it, but he swears it was room temp, and he didn't bump anything to break it. This guy is like the main character in Final Destination with these carboys.
 
Scary **** man.
The first link. "carboy danger and potential death" is particularly disturbing.
Be safe everyone.
 
mpcluever said:
Wrong size for what? A 5 gallon batch works perfect in a 6 gallon carboy. Never used a 6.5 in my life, nor have any of my friends.

I usually do 5.25 gallon batches in a 6.5 gallon carboy. I've only had it overflow once. A 6 might work for you, but (thankfully) we all brew differently.
 
nearly sliced off her thumb

I have a lot of glass carboys. I mostly use them now for wine, since I hate hauling them around.

I've only broken one over the years, but my friend had a dangerous incident a few years ago with one of hers.

She was lifting a 6.5 gallon carboy up to the sink to rinse it out, and the top just bumped the faucet. It broke, falling down, and on the way it nearly sliced off her thumb. She grabbed a towel, and drove herself to the hospital (about 1 mile away) because she figured she didn't have time to call me.

She recovered just fine, with only a scar where they reattached it. The bill was thousands of dollars, mostly covered by insurance.

That really scared me! I think what happens is we bump the carboys many times incidentally, and then when they get bumped again just so they can break like that.

I use buckets and plastic fermenters for primary now for all wines, and all beers. I use glass carboys when I have to for wines but I'm very cautious and don't move them around except on racking day.
 
Denny Conn's story...

I broke 3 carboys, losing 10 gal. of double decocted pilsner, before I gave up on them and switched to buckets. I was stone sober and being extremely careful. One broke when it slipped out of my hands and fell 1-2 in. onto a carpeted floor. Even realizing it's glass and being careful sometimes isn't enough to prevent accidents. I switched to buckets to stack the odds in my favor.
 
No glass carboys for me. I used to be a picture framer. I've seen glass do some crazy crap- and been cut enough times to know the risk.

And yeah, it might never happen to me. I understand that for every one of this pics, there are tens of thousands of brewers who never get injured- and if glass was the only options, then the odds would be in my favor and I'd risk it. Thankfully, though, there are other, lighter, cheaper, less dangerous options. Why risk it?
 
Today will be the first time I use a bucket for a beer I don't plan on dry hopping....even though I have 3 empty carboys.
 
My university has access to past issues of Zymurgy (lucky me). I was perusing an issue from 2010 where a letter described the dangers of glass carboys. Happened that someone nearly cut off their hand from one, doing a simple cleaning procedure in a sink. I got to thinking, my god i love this hobby but nothing like that is worth it.

Ive only been at this a year and think we need as a homebrewing community, to place more emphasis on the dangers of homebrewing. Of course most accidents are avoided by using good common sense. But Ive made some ridiculously bad decisions while brewing when I was hardly aware of the dangers. Including using a propane burner indoors in the basement in winter with a window open, carrying boiling wort down the basement steps, and the most problematic it seems, bare handing these full glass carboys in a sink, swirling, knocking them about like they were indestructible. I HAD NO IDEA HOW FRAGILE THEY ARE AND THE DAMAGE A FULLY LOADED CARBOY CAN DO!
It also seems some of the more popular glass carboys are those made in italy. Not knocking the Italian product, but I have an old water 6.5 g water jug/carboy from the 50s-60s that is much thicker walled and heavier. im done using the MII one.
I feel so lucky that I haven't had an accident yet, really just chalking up to ignorance of the danger. Maybe a sticky on the common sense best safety practices for homebrewing is in order....
Off to brew, albeit more carefully.
 
The older 5 gallon water jugs are thicker, but I've seen two broken for no obvious reason. First one the whole bottom dropped out, second one cracked up the side but held together long enough to siphon the beer into an alternate.

I'm hoping to see Aluminium oxynitride carboys in my lifetime.
 
But Ive made some ridiculously bad decisions while brewing when I was hardly aware of the dangers. Including using a propane burner indoors in the basement in winter with a window open, carrying boiling wort down the basement steps, and the most problematic it seems, bare handing these full glass carboys in a sink, swirling, knocking them about like they were indestructible.

How can a reasonably intelligent person be "hardly aware" of the dangers of ANY of these three things?
 
:off:

Very happy with my glass, but curious about Better Bottles. My 6½ gallon glass carboys actually hold a little over 7 gallons. That’s normally plenty of headspace for a 5+ gallon batch. What is the actual capacity of a 6 gallon BB?

I almost think it is less. Here's something from their site.
Screen Shot 2013-09-19 at 2.05.44 PM.jpg
 
I ditched by two glass carboys last night after buying two 6 gallon plastic "Bubbler" fermenters from Northern Brewer. They had a two for one sale that I could not resist. Ever since I saw this thread, I have been paranoid about using my glass carboys even when carrying with a crate.
 
How can a reasonably intelligent person be "hardly aware" of the dangers of ANY of these three things?
Easily. When you are just starting out all grain brewing there are a several hundred new 'details' one has to pay attention to. Didnt really occur at that moment what a bad idea less than adequate ventilation was in the basement, walking a few feet with hot wort was, etc. Thats why i made the suggestion for those starting out to include in their checklist safety procedures.
 
So today I was sanitizing a five gallon glass carboy with 4 gallons of star san solution, while using a carboy hauler I proceeded to carry carboy over to another room when all of a sudden the bottom dropped out, luckily I was in my basement and all I had was a mess to clean up, no injuries. I was given three of these carboys (made in Italy) from my neighbor that used them for wine making. They were from great bear water company that delivered water to businesses around northern NJ, thirty or more years ago. Don't know how they would haul these things around years ago to water coolers without losing limbs. I am now going to use better bottles in the future. The only thing I don't like about bb is when you roll them to rouse yeast you have to be careful not to kink bottom.
Be safe fellow home brewers!
 
You know , this thread made me realize that of all the drinking glasses I have owned over the years, I do not still own 1 glass out of the original set. They have all broken at one time or another over the years. Same goes with dinner plates. Every so often I have to go buy a new set of drinking glasses.The point is that if you regularly use something made of glass, chances are real high that it will eventually break wether it's a wine glass, everyday drinking glass, or glass carboy. Only with a glass carboy when it breaks, things get a lot more "interesting" when it happens.
I'll take my speidel 30L plastic fermenter and not look back. You can't possibly taste the difference in the beer, and you can sure as hell see the difference when you drop it.... just pick it back up and go on with the brew day like nothing happened.
 
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