[BrewingBrian]

"Glass fermenters are better than plastic buckets.  There, I said it, again.  Glass is dangerous, yes.  Do be very careful with your big heavy glass carboys.  Fortunately, stainless would also be fine."
DMTaylor why are glass fermentors better?

I would say that in addition to more affordable in the long run, it is also healthier to imbibe on home-brewed beers rather than commercial beers.

I would not consider Bud Light, Miller Light, Mich Ultra etc.. to be real beer. I'm sorry but they literally taste like flavored water.

[charles1968]

I believe that a pretty good pseudo lager can be brewed with the right ale yeast (see Zymurgy, Last Drop Mar/Apr 2016).
That piece got me banned from a small lager centric forum.

Absolutely right. Some commercial lagers brewed in Germany, the US, Czechoslovakia and Belgium are made with Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains - what most people on brewing forums would call ale yeasts rather than lager yeasts.

[The Beerery]

I believe that a pretty good pseudo lager can be brewed with the right ale yeast (see Zymurgy, Last Drop Mar/Apr 2016).
That piece got me banned from a small lager centric forum.

Absolutely right. Some commercial lagers brewed in Germany, the US, Czechoslovakia and Belgium are made with Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains - what most people on brewing forums would call ale yeasts rather than lager yeasts.

Specifically pertaining to Germany... which ones?

[dmtaylor]

"Glass fermenters are better than plastic buckets.  There, I said it, again.  Glass is dangerous, yes.  Do be very careful with your big heavy glass carboys.  Fortunately, stainless would also be fine."
DMTaylor why are glass fermentors better?

Glass cannot be scratched and is not oxygen permeable like plastic is.  If well cleaned, there is no place in glass for wild beasts to hide out, and less chance of oxidation.  With plastic, both problems are much more likely.... although many people prefer the convenience and non-breakability of plastic.  Those are good advantages, but personally I'd rather have near-zero chance of contamination or oxidation.

[charles1968]

I believe that a pretty good pseudo lager can be brewed with the right ale yeast (see Zymurgy, Last Drop Mar/Apr 2016).
That piece got me banned from a small lager centric forum.

Absolutely right. Some commercial lagers brewed in Germany, the US, Czechoslovakia and Belgium are made with Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains - what most people on brewing forums would call ale yeasts rather than lager yeasts.

Specifically pertaining to Germany... which ones?

I don't know the strains. Their genomes were sequenced in the study referenced in the link below but the authors (one of whom is Christopher white) are keeping the sources confidential.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5018251/?report=classic

Quote from the paper:
"Interestingly, ten of these S. cerevisiae beer strains are used for commercial production of lager beers, which were believed to be exclusively produced by strains of the genetically related Saccharomyces pastorianus. "

Three of the ten are German - see table S1 in the paper.

I have a hunch the Czech one is urquell - known to be top fermenting. But I could be wrong.

[Stevie]

The guy that created the dual scale Brix/SG refractometer should be kicked in the nuts.

[RC]

"Glass fermenters are better than plastic buckets.  There, I said it, again.  Glass is dangerous, yes.  Do be very careful with your big heavy glass carboys.  Fortunately, stainless would also be fine."
DMTaylor why are glass fermentors better?

Glass cannot be scratched and is not oxygen permeable like plastic is.  If well cleaned, there is no place in glass for wild beasts to hide out, and less chance of oxidation.  With plastic, both problems are much more likely.... although many people prefer the convenience and non-breakability of plastic.  Those are good advantages, but personally I'd rather have near-zero chance of contamination or oxidation.

The accuracy of the above depends on the plastic. Typical bucket fermenters are made of #2 HDPE plastic, which is slightly permeable to oxygen—but probably not permeable enough to matter on a typical homebrew timescale. Plastic carboys are made of #1 PET, which, for all intents and purposes, is impermeable to oxygen (technically it has some permeability, but it’s negligible and it would only be a factor if you are aging a beer for many years). Lack of permeability to oxygen is precisely why PET is used in so much food packaging.

As for scratching, it’s true that plastic carboys are easier to scratch than glass but this is an easy limitation to overcome. It’s only the krausen ring that poses a problem (otherwise a plastic carboy can simply be rinsed out well with hot water). With a wide-mouth plastic carboy, it's of course easy to get inside it and scrub with a sponge. Easy peasy, no scratching. For narrow-mouth plastic carboys, a good soak in PBW (or whatever you use) will get off the krausen ring. And you can buy a gentle, mostly scratch-free carboy brush for plastic fermenters (see http://a.co/626rNXe). I have one and it works great. I've used plastics for over a decade and I've never had contamination, and some of my carboys do have tiny scratches on the inner surface.

Plus—and this might be an unpopular opinion—any contamination risk posed by minor scratches in your plastic carboy pales in comparison to the risk posed by the air, environment, and handling practices of a typical homebrewing session in a garage or the backyard. Tiny scratches in your plastic carboy are nothing compared to all the other contamination risks.

Effectively, there are no disadvantages to plastic carboys, and I don't know why folks still use glass ones.

[Phil_M]

Effectively, there are no disadvantages to plastic carboys, and I don't know why folks still use glass ones.

Because that's what I have, and if I spend the money to upgrade it'll be to stainless steel.

[Philbrew]

"Glass fermenters are better than plastic buckets.  There, I said it, again.  Glass is dangerous, yes.  Do be very careful with your big heavy glass carboys.  Fortunately, stainless would also be fine."
DMTaylor why are glass fermentors better?

Glass cannot be scratched and is not oxygen permeable like plastic is.  If well cleaned, there is no place in glass for wild beasts to hide out, and less chance of oxidation.  With plastic, both problems are much more likely.... although many people prefer the convenience and non-breakability of plastic.  Those are good advantages, but personally I'd rather have near-zero chance of contamination or oxidation.

Actually, a glass vessel has billions of micro-cracks that are unavoidable in cooling from molten.  If it were not for them, glass would be far stronger than steel. (it has to do with the stress risers formed at the radius at the end of the crack)  Now I don't know that these cracks are large enough to harbor bacteria or viruses.  Probably not, but I've not had issues with PET plastic fermenters and the light weight saves my back.

[charles1968]

One disadvantage with plastic is flavor scalping:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor_scalping

I still prefer plastic as it's safer to work with.

[majorvices]

"Glass fermenters are better than plastic buckets.  There, I said it, again.  Glass is dangerous, yes.  Do be very careful with your big heavy glass carboys.  Fortunately, stainless would also be fine."
DMTaylor why are glass fermentors better?

Glass cannot be scratched and is not oxygen permeable like plastic is.  If well cleaned, there is no place in glass for wild beasts to hide out, and less chance of oxidation.  With plastic, both problems are much more likely.... although many people prefer the convenience and non-breakability of plastic.  Those are good advantages, but personally I'd rather have near-zero chance of contamination or oxidation.

Stainless trumps both, and can be cleaned hot which  adds even more benefits for sanitation. Just sayin'.

[majorvices]

Honestly I feel some homebrewers over stress about sanitation. As the above mention about "scratches in plastic", unless you actually have an infection a scratch in plastic isn't going to really matter, even if a srain of bleagian yeast is hiding there and you are brewing a lager. The lager yeast will far out compete the small amount of belgian yeast present.

I don't think one can stress enough about cleanliness however. We recently started using an ATP Meter at the brewery and after I used it I discovered that my tanks were not coming as clean as I thought they were and I had to up my percentage of caustic. I have a feeling some of you may be surprised at the cleanliness level of your glass carboys/plastic buckets if you are only using a PBW or oxiclean soak.

[BrewBama]

Honestly I feel some homebrewers over stress about sanitation. As the above mention about "scratches in plastic", unless you actually have an infection a scratch in plastic isn't going to really matter, even if a srain of bleagian yeast is hiding there and you are brewing a lager. The lager yeast will far out compete the small amount of belgian yeast present.

I don't think one can stress enough about cleanliness however. We recently started using an ATP Meter at the brewery and after I used it I discovered that my tanks were not coming as clean as I thought they were and I had to up my percentage of caustic. I have a feeling some of you may be surprised at the cleanliness level of your glass carboys/plastic buckets if you are only using a PBW or oxiclean soak.

What do you recommend for cleaning at the home brew level?


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[hopfenundmalz]

Effectively, there are no disadvantages to plastic carboys, and I don't know why folks still use glass ones.

Because that's what I have, and if I spend the money to upgrade it'll be to stainless steel.

I have been brewing for a little over 24 years, and have a lot of carboys. They are getting used less and less. Plastic buckets and a conical get used more and more. Glass has become more scary to me.

[hopfenundmalz]

Honestly I feel some homebrewers over stress about sanitation. As the above mention about "scratches in plastic", unless you actually have an infection a scratch in plastic isn't going to really matter, even if a srain of bleagian yeast is hiding there and you are brewing a lager. The lager yeast will far out compete the small amount of belgian yeast present.

I don't think one can stress enough about cleanliness however. We recently started using an ATP Meter at the brewery and after I used it I discovered that my tanks were not coming as clean as I thought they were and I had to up my percentage of caustic. I have a feeling some of you may be surprised at the cleanliness level of your glass carboys/plastic buckets if you are only using a PBW or oxiclean soak.

After being in German breweries that do open fermentation, I am less paranoid about sanitation.

I also would like to know what you would clean with.