Would you use and old/dirty carboy?

[Dan_K]

My dad has a glass carboy, I think it's a 5 gallon carboy- It's got some sort of dark beer in it that was put in there some 15 years ago. It looks pretty gross as you can imagine. I'm wondering if I should clean it out and just use it?

I was thinking about blasting it with a hose to rinse, then soaking for at least 24 hours with warm PBW or B-brite, scrubbing it, rinsing, and sanitizing with bleach.

Would you attempt to bring this old carboy back to life, or just throw it in the recycling bin?

 

[bionut]

Go for it! It's glass, properly cleaned and it's like new. I think PBW is your best friend for this.

 

[Aristotelian]

I would definitely use the carboy. My only question is whether I would drink the beer. How many times do you get to try a 15 year aged stout?

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Yep, I'd clean out really good and sanitize.

 

[m00ps]

Take a pic of the wort. Im guessing by "gross" you mean infected. Its most likely sour, but if there isnt mold on it, it could be safe to drink

 

[Dan_K]

Yeah but would you want to? 15 years old...

 

[kh54s10]

I would not use it.... But that is because it is glass.

Clean it well and it will be good. I might be leery if I didn't know if it had contained chemicals. But old beer - it's good.

 

[jwelch1103]

When I first started brewing in the 80's I bought a couple extremely fouled carboys from a newspaper classified ad.

I used a strong bleach solution that stripped everything off that glass, when it was finished they looked brand new.

IIRC, I used about a cup or two of bleach and water to fill them up and a couple days to soak.

 

[passedpawn]

I'd do a soak with oxyclean or PBW, then follow that with a quick bleaching to ensure everything is killed off.

I don't trust myself with glass though, so I would not use it at all.