Plastic Carboys Views

General Goods

After plastic containers homebrewers started using glass carboys. One of the pros of using glass for home brewing beer includes clarity. It's very simple to observe your beer since glass is clear, and because the glass is not oxygen permeable, it's a safe place to hold and age your homebrew while it ages or ferments. Glass carboys do not get scratched and will basically last forever as long as you don't break them. One of the drawbacks of using glass carboys is that they're heavy. A 5 or six gallon carboy weighs close to twenty pounds, and when you add forty lbs of homebrew to the vessel, you're now up to 60 pounds that you'll need to haul around, which is pretty heavy. The most significant danger in using glass carboys is that they can break if you bump into something. Pouring very hot or cold liquid into an empty vessel can cause it to crack or shatter. In order to remove home brew you will need to siphon it out.

Plastic carboys such as Better Bottle are fairly new to the home brewing world. These are made from a lightweight food grade plastic material and weigh virtually nothing. Better Bottle plastic carboys are sold with a spigot at the base for easy transferring of beer without having to use a siphon. Plastic means there's no chance of shattering the carboy by dropping it or filling with hot liquid. The plastic can become scratched, but it's also transparent and allows you to view the beer during fermentation. If you brew a very strong home brew beer, you will want to age and ferment it in a glass carboy because plastic is more gas permeable, which could cause the beer to taste bad. Also if you don't seal the spigot correctly you may have difficulties with leakage.

So what should you homebrew with, a glass or plastic carboy? Having used both, I feel that brewing with plastic is much better than brewing with glass. It's much easier to work with the lightweight plastic carboy, and making use of the spigot makes moving the beer very easy. But if you're making a beer that needs to age for months at a time, using glass is better than plastic. So in summary, it's best to have both glass and plastic carboys to use for creating home brew in your own microbrewery.

If you are like most brewers, the idea of carrying a glass carboy full of wort around scares you. Our plastic carboys are the perfect solution to your glass carboy woes. Made from PET food-grade plastic, it will not break - even when full of water (we have tested this ourselves and it is true - the bottle just bounces even when dropped from 6 feet off the ground!) We look at this as a great alternative to heavy and fragile glass carboys, which are more like small grenades when full. It takes a #10 stopper or a 5 Gallon Carboy Hood. Weighs 1.5 lbs. Rated to 140 degrees and should not be cleaned with water above 140.