5 gallon batch in 12 gallon carboy

[TripleC223]

My grandfather is giving me his old 12-gallon glass carboy he used to make wine. I am only set up to brew 5-gallon batches (extract) at this point, so would there be any detriment to using a 12-gallon carboy as a primary or secondary?

 

[TexasDroughtBrewery]

Thats a lot of headspace, I am not sure but I think you can get away with it in Primary, but secondary would be a big no no.

 

[porterpounder]

Primary yes. Secondaries are mostly useless in the vast majority of cases, so don't bother and just package. All worries gone.

 

[CU_tony]

Why not do back to back brews or days and end up with 10g in the carboy?
I agree that it shouldn't be an issue to primary 5g in there, but to me it would feel like a waste of space not to put more in there.
Worst case, all that extra air might give you some of the quality's of open fermenting?

 

[TexasDroughtBrewery]

Why not do back to back brews or days and end up with 10g in the carboy?
I agree that it shouldn't be an issue to primary 5g in there, but to me it would feel like a waste of space not to put more in there.
Worst case, all that extra air might give you some of the quality's of open fermenting?

This. Especially if your doing extract it would be easy to get 10 gallons done back to back or two batches at the same time if you have two pots. OR....just get a bigger pot and do 10 gallon batches. With extract brewing its much cheaper on equipment so I don't see this being out of the question....