Newbie - primary and secondary fermentor questions

[Cowboy77]

Hello everyone. New to the forum and new to wine making as well. Been reading books and watching YouTube videos on wine making for a while now and about ready to order equipment and supplies and get started. I'm going to be a small batch guy and having trouble deciding on primary and secondary fermentors and would like some guidance. Here are my questions: Leaning towards using a 3 gallon Better Bottle PET plastic as my primary. What are your thoughts on them (better to use glass carboy, bucket w/lid, something else)? For secondary, would I be better to go with a glass 3 gallon carboy or 2 one gallon jugs, (trying to minimize air space in secondary)? I know there will be some loss of volume due to rackings. My thoughts are to mix up a 2 1/2 gallon batch in primary, then after it's finished, rack that into 2 one gallon jugs with air locks to minimize air space in the jugs. Does this sound logical ?
Thanks everyone in advance for any guidance you can give me. Looking forward to getting started.

 

[Maylar]

Yep. I love my 3 gallon Better Bottle.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Cowboy77 - and welcome. I would suggest that you consider buying a 7 gallon plastic (food grade) bucket. You can use that as your primary and make anything from 1 -5 gallons. You need to only loosely cover this if it's your primary as the yeast will be pouring out pounds of CO2 gas. Why do I suggest a bucket? Because unless you are making wines from kits you always want to make a larger volume of must (the juice before you add yeast) than the volume you are planning to bottle. So, if you want to bottle 3 gallons you may need to begin with 3.5 gallons. If you want to bottle 1 gallon you start with 1.25 or 1.5 gallons. Why? Because the yeast will produce a great deal of sediment (lees) and because siphoning (racking) means that you will leave behind a quantity of the wine. So, rather than "top up" with water (and so diluting your wine) or a bottle of commercial wine (you won't have any of your own until you have been wine making for a year or so) you start with more than you want to finish with as much as you want.
Plastic or glass for your secondary? Your call. Glass can shatter but is easy to clean. Plastic is lighter and is more or less indestructable - but it can scratch and so house bacteria. You can use vacuum pumps with glass to transfer wine - you cannot with plastic. I use both plastic and glass