How To Pick The Right Homebrew Fermenter For Brewing Beer

So you would like to brew your own beer, and you’re not certain what sort of homebrewing products you should use. Whether to use a glass or plastic container to ferment your home brew is the greatest decision any home brewer must make. There are pros and cons to using either, so let’s go over these points.

A lot of people start out brewing and fermenting their homebrew with plastic food quality buckets. True Brew is an example of a brewing supply company that produces such buckets that while are easy to use, are quite limiting. You have to remove the lid from these pails in order to check your fermentation because the plastic is not clear. This increases the odds you’ll ruin your home brewed beer. Bacteria also likes to hide in the soft plastic walls of these containers which can easily become scratched and become dirty.

After plastic containers homebrewers began using glass carboys. One of the pros of using glass for home brewing beer includes clarity. Glass isn’t oxygen permeable, so you need not worry about contamination via the glass carboy, and it’s easy to monitor the beer through the glass. So long as you don’t accidentally bust a glass carboy it basically lasts forever, and the glass is not very easily scratched. Glass carboys, however, are very heavy. A standard 5 gallon batch of homebrew weighs nearly forty lbs, and with the normal glass carboy weighing close to 20 pounds, you have to haul around quite a lot of weight when it’s full. The most significant danger in using glass carboys is that they can break if you bump into anything. Pouring very hot or cold liquid into an unfilled vessel can cause it to fracture or shatter. You must also use a siphon to remove homebrew from a glass carboy.

Better Bottle makes plastic carboys that are fairly new on the homebrewing market. Built from food grade plastic these are very light in weight. Better Bottle plastic carboys are offered with a spigot at the bottom for easy transporting of beer without needing to use a siphon. You can’t break a plastic carboy by dropping it and it won’t shatter if filled with scorching or cold liquid. The plastic can become scratched, but it’s also clear and allows you to see the beer during fermentation. If you brew a very strong homebrew beer, you will want to condition and ferment it in a glass carboy because plastic is more gas permeable, which could cause the beer to taste terrible. Also if you don’t seal the spigot properly you may have difficulties with leakage.

So what should you home brew with, a glass or plastic carboy? I’ve brewed with both many times and feel strongly that using a plastic carboy is far better than brewing with a glass carboy. I think plastic is much safer and much easier to handle, and transferring homebrewed beer is a breeze with the built-in spigot. However, if I make a very potent home brew that needs to ferment or condition for longer than a month, I always transfer the micro brew to a glass carboy. You will want to have both glass and plastic carboys in your microbrewery because each is better in different situations.

Steve Pavilanis is an expert homebrewer who loves teaching others the pleasures of home brewing. Learn more about homebrewing and stop by our instructional video website where you will learn how to brew your own beer. It’s easier than you think!