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Comment by gsruff | Hacker News Reader

I would recommend avoiding glass carboys for fermenting. They are heavy, especially when filled, difficult to clean with their narrow mouths, and quite dangerous if they shatter when you accidentally drop them. (They're easy to drop while you're cleaning them and they're wet and slippery.) There are numerous accounts on home brewing forums of trips to the emergency room because a glass carboy broke and injured someone.

PET plastic fermenters (Better Bottle, FermZilla, Fermonster, etc.) are much nicer to work with.

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A fun glass carboy story. I had just finished an hour-long boil of around 5 gallons of beer wort and then poured it into my carboy. I then needed to cool it down to a safe temperature for the yeast (~70˚) as quickly as possible to prevent infection. It was the middle of a western NY winter and so I though of the obvious solution which was to set the whole thing in a snow bank. Perhaps you can see where this is going.

As soon as I set this 5-gallon glass container of near-boiling liquid in the snow bank I realized my error because of the loud, CRACK sound. I lifted it up by the neck, but only the top half came away and I was left holding a comically large broken-bottle shiv. My roommates at the time all came out to properly laugh at me and I resolved to cool my wort before putting it in the fermentation vessel from then on. And also to stick with plastic fermentation vessels!

Plastic fermenters are MUCH safer (I am one of the many who have gotten minor cuts from shattering glass carboys) but just plain terrible for fermenting in. A little scratch in the wall and your sanitizing process will miss the wild yeast that grows in the scratch making the container essentially useless for fermenting with your chosen yeast only.

Also they make widemouth glass carboys which are very easy to clean. But they shatter all the same.

If your going to avoid glass go 304 stainless (SSBrewtechs BrewBucket etc.) plus it basically lasts forever.

Using a covered plastic or wicker basket is an easy way to transport glass carboys, and should hopefully contain much of the shrapnel if you have the bad fortune to drop them.

Cleaning any bottle with a narrow neck is extra work, but you can get it done with a pipe cleaner, and it's best not to clean at an elevation or to do so in a deep basin.

These are things that come naturally after handling significant glassware for a period of time.

My preferred solution was those Culligan watercooler-style empty 5 gallon water jugs they carry at suburban Wal-Marts. Just be careful to fit some sort of pressure release. They will expand in a scary fashion otherwise.

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