Plastic 'carboy' or steel pot?

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MangoMead

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Here in the lovely tropical Kingdom of Thailand glass carboys do not exist, there simply are none to be had. So I must find some other option for fermenters.

From what I can see my options are plastic or stainless steel. Aluminum pots are around but I don't think I'm down with aluminum as I'm looking at doing some fairly acidic brews, fruit juice wines, meads and mutant hybrids of the two.

There are plenty of fairly cheap ($3-4 usd) 19 liter water bottles that are made from a white plastic that I am pretty sure is Polypropylene (PP), and also slightly less cheap ($6-8 usd) 19 liter ones made from blue tinted polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Both of these types of bottles look just about like the 5 gallon water delivery bottles you would see in the states, except the PP ones you cannot see through and the PET ones are really blue.

There are also some larger, bucket shaped, insulated PP water coolers in various sizes up to about 50 liters. They are a good deal more expensive than the 19L water bottles. The one I priced today I am pretty sure was 50-60 liters and they were asking about $25 usd for it.

There are also countless 6 Liter clear PET water bottles to be had that are essentially free when you buy the water, but 5 liters of must seems kind of a puny batch.

Then there are the stainless steel pots, I've seen 40 liter stainless cooking pots made from nice heavy gauge steel for about $60 usd. They come bigger, but that seemed to be about the biggest that would be easily handled. The steel was thick enough that I'm pretty sure I could get it drilled and tapped for a stainless ball valve if I wanted to as well.

I'm sort of leaning towards either the big PP cooler or the SS pot for a primary fermenter and then going with the PET 6L guys for secondaries. The 6L are a nice convenient size to handle, in fact they come equipped with handles. If they get scratched or funky I can replace them for essentially nothing, as the water that comes in them is what I plan to brew with anyway.

The 6L seem too small for primaries though despite the obvious cost advantage. 19L seems OK for a primary but I don't like the idea of trying to clean a bottle for reuse that I cannot see inside of (the PP bottles) and even the PET 19L bottles seem like they might be a pain to clean, or at least clean without scratching up.

The big PP cooler would be easy to get inside of to clean but more easily scratched up. It is also insulated, which could be a problem in the hot weather here as I'm more interested in my must being able to shed heat than hold onto it.

The biggest downside I see to the SS pots is initial cost and difficulty in sealing the lids. But doing meads and fruit wines I'm not sure having a super tight seal is as big a deal as with beer, and the SS will last pretty much forever. As soon as I funk up or scratch the 7th PET 19L carboy I will be spending more than I would have on that 40L SS pot.

What do you think you would do if glass was not available?
 
for primary, i have used the following, unused clean paint bucket.
unused cleaned garbage can...a 50 quart igloo.
i would use just about anything for a primary, its not going to be in the container very long...secondary, i would go with the ss.
 
So maybe a bigger cooler type primary fermenter and some smaller SS pots for secondaries? The smaller SS pots in the 10L - 20L range were a lot cheaper per liter of capacity than the big 40L guy was.

What about the sealing issue? Isn't having a good seal more important in the secondary than the primary? For a really good seal I might need to do some kind of gasket around the lid, but I think I can make one that would work.
 
You cant order one off ebay?? Id pass the stainless steel because u are going to need to put it on airlock. Which brings us to, your gonna need an airlock. Are you worried it wont make it through customs ? Is that the problem. If thats the case your in a pickle. I get a water bottle and a balloon and hope for the best.
 
Having a tight seal is much more important in secondary than primary. I think your best bet is to use the PET bottles for secondary.
 
Agree,, PET ar anything with a recycle value of 1 is probably pretty safe.
 
You cant order one off ebay?? Id pass the stainless steel because u are going to need to put it on airlock. Which brings us to, your gonna need an airlock. Are you worried it wont make it through customs ? Is that the problem. If thats the case your in a pickle. I get a water bottle and a balloon and hope for the best.

Nope I can't just order glass carboys off of ebay, none of the folks I see on ebay selling them ship over here for one thing, and even if they did I'd be really worried about shipping something that big, heavy and fragile all the way over here. I'm pretty sure I would end up getting a big box full of glass shards.

I can get airlocks, at worst I can use the old tube in a jar of water airlock, but regular little plastic airlocks are not hard to get.

The message I'm getting seems to mostly be that PET is fine, other plastics would be OK if it was for a shorter fermenting time and steel is good if the lid sealing issue can be overcome.
 
Even with a gasketed lid, you'll most likely have lots of headspace with a stainless steel pot. Bottles are better since they neck up and your headspace has very little surface area exposed. They do make stainless steel tanks that have a special floating lid, you might be able to replicate that with a regular stainless pot.
 
Even with a gasketed lid, you'll most likely have lots of headspace with a stainless steel pot. Bottles are better since they neck up and your headspace has very little surface area exposed. They do make stainless steel tanks that have a special floating lid, you might be able to replicate that with a regular stainless pot.

Yeah that was something else I was thinking of. It seems the headspace is good in the primary and bad in the secondary. I could maybe do something to reduce the surface area with a chunk of floating cutting board or something, but a big piece of plastic floating in there defeats whole purpose of going with SS in the first place.

So it seems that the 6L clear PET bottles are the choice for secondaries and the more I think about it the 40L SS pot sounds just right for the primary. If I leave 10% headroom, that leaves me with 36 liter batches, just enough to fill 6 6L secondaries to about 5.5L to 5.7L each, figuring 5% loss to trub.
 
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