Cracking the Carboy Conundrum

“[It happened] after setting down a carboy full of perfectly-aged Russian Imperial Stout I was getting ready to bottle for competition, alas just a little too hard,” says Ross Browne of Arizona-based Next Level Brewing, a company that designs innovative products for homebrewers, by homebrewers. “What started as five gallons of medal-worthy beer (or so I hoped) ended up a pile of broken glass and a sticky brown mess.”

Thankfully the only damage here is a broken carboy and the loss of 5 gallons of beer. I have read many posts of shattered glass carboys and seen horrific photographs of folks getting multiple stiches from nasty cuts from the shards of glass.

Glass carboys break in ways other than hard ‘bumps’ when reaching the floor. Folks have discussed how they slipped out of their hands during cleaning, when one carboy gently tapped into a carboy next to it, etc.

A ‘better’ solution is brewing in plastic such as a Better Bottle Carboy. Plastic does not shatter and you will not be visiting an emergency room to get stiches for nasty cuts.

Cheers!

 

I've fermented in glass almost exclusively over the past 13 years and have never broken a single carboy. Just gotta be extra careful when cleaning and carrying them, is all.

 

I hate the extra risk; not too mention coupla extra pounds of weight involved with carrying and cleaning glass carboys. And that's the main reason I don't use it at home.
Stainless, or plastic carboy.

 

When I worked at the homebrew shop, I remember one customer with a serious scar. He was bear hugging a carboy full of hot PBW over his slop sink and it cracked right under his arm. Hundreds of stitches; it looked like a shark bite.

My problem with better bottles/buckets is they eliminate carboys’ biggest advantage: oxygen impermeability. Stainless for me.

 

Better Bottles are quite impermeable to oxygen diffusion:

“They are made of special virgin PET and they are made in a manner that packs the plastic molecules very tightly and creates a delicate balance between microcrystaline and amorphous regions.1 The success of the BetterBottle PET fermentation carboys and fittings is empirical evidence that they have extremely low permeability for oxygen…”

http://www.better-bottle.com/technical.html

You can go to the website and read the technical papers where this is quantified.

Cheers!

P.S. Oxygen impermeability is really only an issue for long term storage. I primary ferment in HDPE buckets and for this purpose they work just fine

 

I use milk crates.

 

Perhaps my math is off, but they found .5mL/L daily O2 ingress, which they call ‘negligible’. Isn’t that 50ppm/day? Seems like a legitimate concern.

You are right, of course, this probably won’t affect most homebrewers, especially if you are a big pale ale/ipa/crusher brewer, but if you are brewing beers that you intend to set aside for some time, I definitely think glass/stainless is worth consideration.

 

What I read was 0.05 ml O2 per liter per day.

Do you have more technical details here?

Lots of folks have long term aged their beers and wines using Better Bottles. I have not read negative reports. If you have more information here I would like to read it.

Cheers!

http://www.better-bottle.com/pdf/CarboyPermeabilityStudy.pdf

P.S. Did you take note of: “Significantly less oxygen permeates through the walls of BetterBottle carboys than permeates through liquid-filled air locks and many types of closures, especially closures made of silicone rubber or plasticized PVC.”

The concept of “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link” comes to mind.

 

Sorry, my math apparently was right, but my writing was wrong. That's a first!

Double-checked with this:
https://www.easycalculation.com/unit-conversion/ppm-ml-conversion.php

Industry standards for O2 can be found here (page 2):
file:///C:/Users/Brewers/Downloads/US%20LIT2149_How_To_Measure_DO_In_Brewery.pdf

Unless I'm missing something major, 50ppm/day seems like a massive amount of O2 when < 50ppb is the target.

I did read that bit about airlocks, ect. and honestly it sounds like a "this is bad, but it could be worse" argument. I also don't use airlocks for this reason.

 

But homebrewers do use airlocks. So...

Cheers!

P.S. But those homebrewers who use Better Bottle Carboys have the option to use a Better Bottle dry trap closure:

“BetterBottle engineers determined that DryTrap air locks are more effective at blocking the passage of oxygen than conventional water-filled air locks.”

http://www.better-bottle.com/products_master.html

Cheers!

 

This Blichman 14 gallon stainless steel fermentor utilizes an airlock (3 piece airlock).

Cheers!

 

Not all of them...

 

But the Blichman vessel that I posted above does use an airlock so...

Cheers!

 

Yeah, they also have a section on their fermenter FAQs making excuses for their use of weldless fittings and trying to argue for their superiority over welds.

For the price they charge and John Blichmann’s reported smarts, they make some...uh...interesting decisions.

 

I wish I could afford to purchase Blichmann equipment. Like the vast majority of homebrewers out there my homebrewery is very modest in comparison (e.g., a 7.9 gallon plastic bucket as my primary fermentor).

Despite the modest nature of the equipment the quality of he resulting product (i.e., beer) is very high. Not absolute need for stainless steel in my opinion.

Cheers!

 

Homebrewing means something different to every one of us and what works for one, won’t necessarily work for another. You certainly don’t need a mini-pro brewery to produce great beer.

For me, when I was first getting into the hobby, there was an over abundance of the RDWHAHB stuff, to the point of misinformation and downplaying of legitimate concerns.

I just want to put the information out there for homebrewers to see and use it as they please.

 

Fair enough.

I have been homebrewing for over 20 years and I have batch number 414 in my primary right now but I agree that additional information can be useful.

We are all the head brewers of our homebreweries and we all get to choose how to brew in our breweries.

Cheers!

 

I definitely did a double-take when I read "PORON" in the article. 3M should seek outside counsel for naming their products.

Although I'm not a homebrewer...... Foam pads permanently adhered to a carboy seems like it would present a problem if you needed to clean them after spill or overflow..... old beer absorbed into foam. Your carboy is probably going to get wet during any cleaning, so drying the pads will take longer too. Good luck if you ever want to remove the pads and their industrial-strength adhesive.

It seems like a better solution would be a protective rubber slip-on/slip-off "boot" or a shock-absorbing rack. Some other enterprising person can run with that idea. You're welcome.

EDIT: or @JackHorzempa's plastic carboy, but I know some people have a gut-level aversion to plastic

Hell... wrapping several old towels/large rags around the bottom of your carboy and securing them with string, rope, or bungee cord would probably do the trick too. If anything spills, just throw the towels in the washing machine. Done.

I feel like we have tendency to over-engineer solutions to minor problems.... But as I said in the beginning, I'm not a homebrewer... maybe I know nothing.

 

They didn’t own a towel?