I live in Montana and an working on setting up a work station in my garage. I am thinking about creating a space to store my brewing equipment to get everything out of the basement. However, my garage is not heated/insulated, so it would definitely get below freezing during parts of the winter months, sometimes for long periods of time.
Some of the equipment I plan on storing would be large glass carboys, empty glass bottles & plastic equipment such as siphons & tubing. I am mainly concerned about the cold cracking the glass equipment, but I figured I would check here to see if anyone else has experience storing equipment in the cold & whether I should be worried or not.
No problem storing glass or other equipment in freezing temperatures as long as they contain no liquid. This is especially important for wort chillers.
Glass carboys should never touch concrete. Store on a soft pad or shelf. Cover the mouth of a carboy with aluminum foil or cloth instead of a stopper. This will prevent glass stress from changing internal pressure when the temperature fluctuates. During warm weather cloth may work best to prevent trapping humid air in carboys which could lead to moldy dust.
Let cold glass and plastics warm slowly to room temperature before using to prevent stress cracking.
You should be good with just the simple precautions.
Maybe somewhere down the road, insulate perhaps just the ceiling? You’d be surprised just how much warmer a building can get… Then a space heater? Sneezles61
