Broken Carboy

[artmon]

Wow, washing out my secondary carboy and Boom.
Glass everywhere! Luckily, I was holding it only a few inches off the ground when it happened and none of it hit me.

Time to switch to plastic carboys.

 

[brewingmeister]

You're mad concrete broke some glass? sold surfaces and carboys don't mix. stick with glass and use a mat or some scrap wood.

 

[chainsawpancake]

plastic bad, glass good. in my opinion.

 

[hawgwild81]

plastic bad, glass good. in my opinion.

Tell that to my finger. Same thing happened to me that happened to the OP. only I wasn't as lucky. Had to have surgery to repair my tendon and nerve. Still cant move the tip of my finger Just one of those freak accidents. I've switched to better bottles.

 

[postal_penguin]

Tell that to my finger. Same thing happened to me that happened to the OP. only I wasn't as lucky. Had to have surgery to repair my tendon and nerve. Still cant move the tip of my finger Just one of those freak accidents. I've switched to better bottles.

Yup, I don't trust myself to use glass. My Better Bottles are much more forgiving to my slightly inebriated state.

 

[E-Mursed]

Bottles are much more forgiving to my slightly inebriated state.

I think we have isolated the problem....

 

[LuiInIdaho]

I had a glass carboy that came with my kit. When I wanted to get some more carboys, I bought a Better Bottle because of the price savings. I have since purchased more Better Bottles, but chose to give my glass carboy because of some posts like yours. By the way, I also purchased a Brew Hauler for each carboy. I love these as it makes it much easier to move the carboys, and the Better Bottles are so much lighter and more forgiving than glass. Mark

 

[artmon]

I'm with hawgwild. I'm not taking any more chances. His picture is worth a thousand words.

 

[bzwyatt]

I broke one yesterday. I'm just brewing in buckets from now on, I think. Carboys are cool, but my fingers hurt and the cuts aren't that bad... I am not gonna mess with having some **** like those pics happen... I play the piano and I'm going to have one in my brewpub when I open it, and I plan on playing it, with all 10 of my fingers.

 

[CBMbrewer]

Second thread on this in one week. I don't know why I ever used glass carboys.

 

[bob1852]

Second thread on this in one week. I don't know why I ever used glass carboys.

Actually, this thread was from February.

 

[Mozart]

I happen to have a bum shoulder, so glass carboys were never a consideration for me due to weight.

That said, I have a brew buddy who has one. Let's just say after seeing pictures like these, and others, on this forum, whenever he picks that thing up to move it around, especially when it's full, I quietly move a little distance away.

 

[Frige]

I have 2 glass carboys for sale, cheep if anyone is in my area......

 

[mikescooling]

My fear is how much pressure I'm putting on any one point as I lift it. If a 6.5 total weight is let say 60lbs, I am pushing that hard on the bottom of one spot with my hand, if it were to break I'd impala me hand. The glass I have is getting lifted in milk crates, O and I've had two Brew-haulers break. I started a thread on it.

 

[bzwyatt]

Is there a drawback I don't know about to buckets? The only thing I can think of that matters is they could get scratched/harbor bacteria easier than glass.
I clean my stuff right away and have never had to scrub a bucket, so I'm not too worried about scratching them, and I know it won't scratch me if I slip doing it, haha.


I don't care anymore if I can watch the fermentation.
I don't care anymore that I have a cool-looking vessel full of beer (yes, I think carboys look cool. It wasn't a reason I got them, but it was a bonus).

I don't even want a better bottle, I don't see the point. Buckets have a big huge opening, easy for pouring into and out of. They have a great handle. You can sanitize, soak bottles, everything in them. they cost less than $10 with a lid.

Is there any good reason to use anything else for this kind of simple brewing?

 

[negativereaction]

One good reason: you can see your yeast partying, and your wort getting thrashed about. That's worth the price of admission right there.

 

[Jeepinctbrewer]

Is there a drawback I don't know about to buckets? The only thing I can think of that matters is they could get scratched/harbor bacteria easier than glass.
I clean my stuff right away and have never had to scrub a bucket, so I'm not too worried about scratching them, and I know it won't scratch me if I slip doing it, haha.

I don't care anymore if I can watch the fermentation.
I don't care anymore that I have a cool-looking vessel full of beer (yes, I think carboys look cool. It wasn't a reason I got them, but it was a bonus).

I don't even want a better bottle, I don't see the point. Buckets have a big huge opening, easy for pouring into and out of. They have a great handle. You can sanitize, soak bottles, everything in them. they cost less than $10 with a lid.

Is there any good reason to use anything else for this kind of simple brewing?

I started with better bottles .. Watching the fermentation part got old.. And I went back to buckets , easy and cheap

 

[Mozart]

Is there a drawback I don't know about to buckets? The only thing I can think of that matters is they could get scratched/harbor bacteria easier than glass.
I clean my stuff right away and have never had to scrub a bucket, so I'm not too worried about scratching them, and I know it won't scratch me if I slip doing it, haha.


I don't care anymore if I can watch the fermentation.
I don't care anymore that I have a cool-looking vessel full of beer (yes, I think carboys look cool. It wasn't a reason I got them, but it was a bonus).

I don't even want a better bottle, I don't see the point. Buckets have a big huge opening, easy for pouring into and out of. They have a great handle. You can sanitize, soak bottles, everything in them. they cost less than $10 with a lid.

Is there any good reason to use anything else for this kind of simple brewing?

There are a whole lot of opinions on this, but some people do like to see their yeast partying, as another HBTer wrote.

Personally, I love the buckets and will stick with them even over better bottles. Those wide openings make things easy to clean. I haven't had one scratch on me yet, but it is possible. They also, unlike glass, will absorb small amounts of color and odor from previous brews, but I've never noticed that altering the flavor or aroma of any of my subsequent brews.

A couple other things I like about them... I can line mine with a 24x24 inch nylon mesh bag when I pour in my wort - then I just take out the bag and all the hop gunk along with it and it's big enough that it never clogs.

On my last brew, I put about a gallon of ice (broken down into smaller chunks) right in the bottom of my fermenter and poured my wort right atop it, stirred until the ice melted, then added chilled topoff water until I was at pitching temp.

I was very surprised at how well this worked and how much faster it was than using the water and ice baths I'd been using before. The beauty of the method, I think, is that I'm only cooling the wort, and not the kettle. Any other method, even immersion chillers, require cooling the kettle along with the wort.

This method wouldn't be feasible with a carboy or better bottle.

Now, I typically do 2.5 gallon to 3 gallon boils and top off, so for full-volume folks, this cooling method won't work as well, but for me, it's yet another advantage of the bucket.

Cheers!

 

[bzwyatt]

Does cold sanitize?

 

[Mozart]

Does cold sanitize?

Not 100% certain I understand the question, or if it was directed at my prior post, but I'll answer as best I can.

No, cold doesn't sanitize.

I try to cool the wort down as quickly as I can for 2 reasons:

#1: Clarity. The faster one is able to cool the wort, the less cloudy the finished product will be.

#2: Time. I want to pitch my yeast and get started cleaning up sooner rather than later!

Since cold doesn't sanitize, what I did was buy some of those cheap plastic food containers, gave them and their lids a dunk in StarSan, then filled them up with what I normally use for topoff water (I use bottled spring water, others boil their water, so in short, however you sanitize your topoff water normally, if you do, do the same to the water you are making your ice from).

I didn't time it, but between the ice and the refrigerated spring water, I think I cooled 2.5 gallons of near boiling wort (I did an extract addition at flameout so it sat for 5-10 mins off flame while I stirred) to a pitching temp of around 70 in something like 5 minutes.

Don't quote me on that, because I didn't time it, but it was the fastest cooldown I've ever done as a homebrewer.

 

[bzwyatt]

I meant if you freeze water are bacteria killed by the temperature, similar to how boiling kills bacteria, but in the reverse direction on a thermometer's scale.

or

Do you have to sanitize your water before you make it ice for chilling your wort?

 

[mikescooling]

No,, some just go dormant, others like it.
The ice for chilling doesn't touch the wort, it's on the inside of the coil. If your talking about putting ice in the wort, I don't know?

 

[bzwyatt]

Mozart just said he puts ice in his fermenter before he pours the wort in. I've thought about doing that too, but I don't have sanitized ice, so I haven't.

That's why I asked the question.

 

[Mozart]

Mozart just said he puts ice in his fermenter before he pours the wort in. I've thought about doing that too, but I don't have sanitized ice, so I haven't.

That's why I asked the question.

I concur, the freezing process itself will not kill off everything we want to try to kill off to prevent infection.

That is why I create my own sanitized ice in my own sanitized containers.

 

[mpcluever]

I have heard of people freezing water that's been boiled in some sort of sealed container/bag and adding that to the boiled wort to chill it.

 

[Mozart]

I have heard of people freezing water that's been boiled in some sort of sealed container/bag and adding that to the boiled wort to chill it.

People do that too.

I like adding the wort to the ice (in my fermenting bucket) as opposed to adding the ice to the wort for one specific reason.

By pouring the wort out of the kettle and onto the ice, I only have to cool the wort, I don't also have to cool the kettle along with it.

 

[bzwyatt]

I got another glass carboy, haha. I needed another fermentor and got glass. I found out why I broke the first one, and it was avoidable, and I like glass, so I'm back. Hahaha.

 

[brewbush]

I still use glass (have many plastic carboys also) but I do a couple things differently

1. If the carboy needs to be lifted into anything, I use plastic
2. For transferring I use the allinonewine pump so I do not have to lift glass carboys to siphon
3. I place the empty glass carboy onto the rolling plastic plant stands (from lowes) to wheel it around my basement

Can't afford any lacerated tendons!

 

[bja]

I found out why I broke the first one, and it was avoidable,

It always is. A lot of times people blame things on "freak accidents" but in reality it's just carelessness and not paying attention to what you're doing.

 

[jbaysurfer]

It always is. A lot of times people blame things on "freak accidents" but in reality it's just carelessness and not paying attention to what you're doing.

In reality, carelessness is an integral part of humanity. There are two kinds of bikers...those that have gone down and those that are going down. Accidents are inevitable.