Glass or plastic?

[Shamus30]

I am pretty new here and to home brewing, but from everything I have read on the internet what follows is my understanding (Because if it's on the internet it has to be true):

Glass Carboys:

Pros according to those who use them:

- Blessed by the Gods of Olympus as the only vessel that is capable of fermenting the superior beers that only a home brewer can appreciate the subtle flavors of (like angel farts, unicorn drool and victoria's secret model sweat)

- Superior in every way (including the complex you develop that allows you to laud it over the heads of those in your homebrew club who still use plastic buckets and "Butter Bottles")

Cons according those who have never used them:

- Forged at the base of Mt. Doom by Orcs and Dragons using the bones of babies and the blood of nuns

- Each one comes with a time delay self destruct device that is guaranteed to explode during any of the following situations:
1) Moving from car to home
2) Temperature Variations from hot to cold, or cold to hot, or tepid to
lukewarm
3) Pouring Wort in, racking wort out, brewing near carboy, thinking about
brewing near carboy, thinking about buying glass carboy


Plastic Buckets:

Pros according to those who use them:

- Hand Crafted by the delicate hands of blind and deaf virgin women who are the offspring of the 1986 Swedish Bikini team and Fabio

- Inexpensive, easy to come by, and rated 5 Stars by the National Highway Safety Administration in both frontal and side impact collisions.

- So safe and airtight that the next space mission will be using them instead of Specially designed cargo containers

- So safe that Parenting Magazine has recommended that new parents seal their newborns in them for the first 18 Months of life (secondary optional after the first 6 months) *warning this method will produce a lot of trub


Cons by those who are far too superior to use them:

- Manufactured by cult members in W. Virginia from a combination of cow dung and botulism
- If scratched, demons from another dimension are released from the scratches and they can never be sealed and will forever haunt your beer and those who drink it. The only cure is to repent and pray at the alter of super heated and blown silicon...
- Contain wormholes that magically transport Oxygen molecules from Los Angeles into your beer


Better Bottles:

Pros by those who have been blessed with an opportunity to use them:

- Created by a distant and superiorly intelligent Alien race from materials that are far more advanced than mere mortals should be allowed to use.

- Lighter than a feather, faster than a speeding CO2 bubble, able to withstand falls from a 12 story building without so much as scratch on it or any bystanders who happen to be blessed by it hitting them in the head.

Cons by those who will never use them because they sound too good to be true like unicorns, leprechauns and regular bowel movements:

- Made as a byproduct of a pact with the devil that MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice made to launch their strangely successful (albeit short lived) careers.

- It's mother was a hamster and it's father smelt of elderberries

- Will melt in the face of sheer determination and wort hotter than room temperature

- Will become brittle and explode into a million pieces if you use any sanitizer in it for more than 5 seconds

 

[TANSTAAFB]

Epic

 

[lmnop]

That is patently, wrong and has been disproven over and over and over...the actual permeability numbers between the plastic fermenters we use including buckets, and better bottles are negligable...they are little or no different from glass fermenters. It's been long disproven...And it was many of us suspect simply a marketing slur from the glass carboy industry to dissuade people from buying cheaper buckets (and now better bottles)...The plastic industry has made leaps an bounds pretty much since 1999, when the very first plastic bottles were actually used to house beer....

If Plastic were so bad in the beer industry these days, why would EVERY commercial mega brewery risk multi millions of dollars to put their beer in plastic bottles these days?

Plastic is fine to use these days...

Yikes! Sorry, Revvy.

Plastic and glass both have pros and cons, and I feel like steel has more pros and fewer cons than either one. I was just trying to give some quick examples of negative things people say about each, but clearly I used a bad example.

 

[Nokitchen]

I use both.
Glass Primary.
Plastic Secondary.

I do the same, but only until the BetterBottle engineers roll out a 6.5 gallon version they have confidence in. I don't use buckets because I am way too much of a spazz to be trusted with a mouth that wide, even for the short time the cover is off. When the BB boys do have a product with enough headroom for me I'll be sending that dangerous, heavy piece of glass to a mailroom water dispenser somewhere.

If Plastic were so bad in the beer industry these days, why would EVERY commercial mega brewery risk multi millions of dollars to put their beer in plastic bottles these days?

Those bottles work almost as well as glass ones (and the tiny shortfall is in the capping not the plastic itself) but beer companies knew the reaction to their introduction would be (unjustly) negative. They introduced those at the behest of the big sports organizations.

 

[sockmerchant]

I am pretty new here and to home brewing, but from everything I have read on the internet what follows is my understanding (Because if it's on the internet it has to be true):

Glass Carboys:

Pros according to those who use them:

- Blessed by the Gods of Olympus as the only vessel that is capable of fermenting the superior beers that only a home brewer can appreciate the subtle flavors of (like angel farts, unicorn drool and victoria's secret model sweat)

- Superior in every way (including the complex you develop that allows you to laud it over the heads of those in your homebrew club who still use plastic buckets and "Butter Bottles")

Cons according those who have never used them:

- Forged at the base of Mt. Doom by Orcs and Dragons using the bones of babies and the blood of nuns

- Each one comes with a time delay self destruct device that is guaranteed to explode during any of the following situations:
1) Moving from car to home
2) Temperature Variations from hot to cold, or cold to hot, or tepid to
lukewarm
3) Pouring Wort in, racking wort out, brewing near carboy, thinking about
brewing near carboy, thinking about buying glass carboy


Plastic Buckets:

Pros according to those who use them:

- Hand Crafted by the delicate hands of blind and deaf virgin women who are the offspring of the 1986 Swedish Bikini team and Fabio

- Inexpensive, easy to come by, and rated 5 Stars by the National Highway Safety Administration in both frontal and side impact collisions.

- So safe and airtight that the next space mission will be using them instead of Specially designed cargo containers

- So safe that Parenting Magazine has recommended that new parents seal their newborns in them for the first 18 Months of life (secondary optional after the first 6 months) *warning this method will produce a lot of trub


Cons by those who are far too superior to use them:

- Manufactured by cult members in W. Virginia from a combination of cow dung and botulism
- If scratched, demons from another dimension are released from the scratches and they can never be sealed and will forever haunt your beer and those who drink it. The only cure is to repent and pray at the alter of super heated and blown silicon...
- Contain wormholes that magically transport Oxygen molecules from Los Angeles into your beer


Better Bottles:

Pros by those who have been blessed with an opportunity to use them:

- Created by a distant and superiorly intelligent Alien race from materials that are far more advanced than mere mortals should be allowed to use.

- Lighter than a feather, faster than a speeding CO2 bubble, able to withstand falls from a 12 story building without so much as scratch on it or any bystanders who happen to be blessed by it hitting them in the head.

Cons by those who will never use them because they sound too good to be true like unicorns, leprechauns and regular bowel movements:

- Made as a byproduct of a pact with the devil that MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice made to launch their strangely successful (albeit short lived) careers.

- It's mother was a hamster and it's father smelt of elderberries

- Will melt in the face of sheer determination and wort hotter than room temperature

- Will become brittle and explode into a million pieces if you use any sanitizer in it for more than 5 seconds

I "lol'd"
:rockin:

 

[dabaki]

I am pretty new here and to home brewing, but from everything I have read on the internet what follows is my understanding (Because if it's on the internet it has to be true):

Glass Carboys:

Pros according to those who use them:

- Blessed by the Gods of Olympus as the only vessel that is capable of fermenting the superior beers that only a home brewer can appreciate the subtle flavors of (like angel farts, unicorn drool and victoria's secret model sweat)

- Superior in every way (including the complex you develop that allows you to laud it over the heads of those in your homebrew club who still use plastic buckets and "Butter Bottles")

Cons according those who have never used them:

- Forged at the base of Mt. Doom by Orcs and Dragons using the bones of babies and the blood of nuns

- Each one comes with a time delay self destruct device that is guaranteed to explode during any of the following situations:
1) Moving from car to home
2) Temperature Variations from hot to cold, or cold to hot, or tepid to
lukewarm
3) Pouring Wort in, racking wort out, brewing near carboy, thinking about
brewing near carboy, thinking about buying glass carboy


Plastic Buckets:

Pros according to those who use them:

- Hand Crafted by the delicate hands of blind and deaf virgin women who are the offspring of the 1986 Swedish Bikini team and Fabio

- Inexpensive, easy to come by, and rated 5 Stars by the National Highway Safety Administration in both frontal and side impact collisions.

- So safe and airtight that the next space mission will be using them instead of Specially designed cargo containers

- So safe that Parenting Magazine has recommended that new parents seal their newborns in them for the first 18 Months of life (secondary optional after the first 6 months) *warning this method will produce a lot of trub


Cons by those who are far too superior to use them:

- Manufactured by cult members in W. Virginia from a combination of cow dung and botulism
- If scratched, demons from another dimension are released from the scratches and they can never be sealed and will forever haunt your beer and those who drink it. The only cure is to repent and pray at the alter of super heated and blown silicon...
- Contain wormholes that magically transport Oxygen molecules from Los Angeles into your beer


Better Bottles:

Pros by those who have been blessed with an opportunity to use them:

- Created by a distant and superiorly intelligent Alien race from materials that are far more advanced than mere mortals should be allowed to use.

- Lighter than a feather, faster than a speeding CO2 bubble, able to withstand falls from a 12 story building without so much as scratch on it or any bystanders who happen to be blessed by it hitting them in the head.

Cons by those who will never use them because they sound too good to be true like unicorns, leprechauns and regular bowel movements:

- Made as a byproduct of a pact with the devil that MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice made to launch their strangely successful (albeit short lived) careers.

- It's mother was a hamster and it's father smelt of elderberries

- Will melt in the face of sheer determination and wort hotter than room temperature

- Will become brittle and explode into a million pieces if you use any sanitizer in it for more than 5 seconds

Hehe. I had to come out of my lurking to compliment you on that one. Well done, sir!

Oh, and hello everyone.

 

[weconway]

I am pretty new here and to home brewing, but from everything I have read on the internet what follows is my understanding (Because if it's on the internet it has to be true):

Glass Carboys...

Victoria secret model sweat is hard to come by and expensive (ask Leo DiCaprio). If it is going into my beer, then I want to taste it.

Epic.

 

[Revvy]

Shamus, probably one of the best posts on here in a LOOOOONG time, and from a noob on here no less. Good on you, I think you'll fit in just fine around here.

 

[TANSTAAFB]

So true, you will fit in just fine round here. He's already enshrined in the Official Memorable Quotes thread Revvy

That is possibly the single greatest post ever...so many quotable quotes...

You are a Noob no more my friend :rockin:

 

[Shamus30]

Aww shucks guys....

Thanks,

Shane