I'll Never Use A Glass Carboy Again

[Darren]

Beware cleaning those puppies,

Napisan is very slippery.

cheers

Darren

 

[Scruffy]

I have about 8 or so litres left...

Gotta love Sham-Wow!

...sorry for your loss! My thoughts are with you and your family at this time.

 

[pdilley]

The glass demis all come in a protective plastic basket already. Seppos have not caught onto Europe yet and they only have a lifter handle as their claim to faim with glass carboys. Ive not had issues with any demis, even had the 34Litre almost full of water and ou of the protective basket on a wooden board on the tile floor to do fish tank heater tests and baselines and it slipped off onto the hard tile when leaning over to poir water down the floor drain and no issues -- but I did stop breathing for a half second

The glass isnt tough if cleaned after racking. To cheat I kept the original plasic cap and cap em after racking so they dont dry out inside and stay moist for a week before I get around to cleaning.
I have a "cleaning wand"-- plastic arriving from the States that attaches to the kitchen faucet so soon I'll
just wizz around them and blast it clean in less than a minute easy as.

I will say go plastic if you are moving it up and down a lot and want it easy as without slowing down and finessing the last couple of cm's to surface contact when full. I plan ahead and leave them sit on a dedicated bench so Im always racking down with gravity without having to lift them just before hand. But techniques I think are different so you can't swap from plastic and treat glass with the same way you had treated a plastic fermenter. I man-handle my plastic like anything and prefer them when I'm in a rush so long term projectslike the meads and ciders go glass exclusively and the beer goes either plastic or glass and if brewing during a busy month then beers go mostly plastic.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[chucke]

americans love em - or maybe they are just well cheap over there.

Not so much these days.

Stories of shattered carboys, sliced feet and the loss of 19 liters of beer- coupled with the sharp increase in price Americans are moving to Better Bottles or other plastic options.

 

[chucke]

If you really want to go down the carboy route then look at the Better-bottle ones made out of PET plastic. They are expensive versus standard plastic screw top fermenters but cheap against the cost of glass carboys.

They do bounce when you drop them, even with 12L of liquid in them I did an unscheduled experiment whilst cleaning one a while back.

Beware of using too hot water when you clean them though, as Randyrob accidentally did an experiment once with boiling water which did not have a happy ending

Melting a Better Bottle is not a pretty sight. Sorta reminds me of the Wicked Witch of the West.

I'm melting!

 

[pdilley]

They do shatter (better bottles) if dropped from a decent height but you can definitely drop higher than glass

 

[hoohaaman]

not if you have access to commercial caustic - cleans them in seconds!

Fermenting in glass demijohns is great as they are less permeable to air than a plastic container, and are more hygenic (considering the porous nature of plastic)

I sit mine in the protective plastic containers which have handles, to enable easy movement, I don't put hot water in them, and I dont let then sit on surfaces that are either too cold (or hot for that matter)

Haven't broken one yet...

Since when was plastic a big deAL,BESIDES SEPPOS

 

[skippy]

Since when was plastic a big deAL,BESIDES SEPPOS

????