How easy is it to infect a batch?

[quote=“grainbelt”]using a plastic bucket for 2+ years is not a good idea. Thats the type of equipment that needs to be replaced dependent on brew scale. Even brewing minimal I would replace atleast once in two years.[/quote]I’ve had some of mine for 5+ years, but I only clean with a soft cloth after a PBW soak, so no scratches.

thats cool, I would rather just replace for 10 or 15 bucks, you can’t see the scratches in those things anyways, unless your talking a major gash

Carboys ain’t too expensive, and not too much harder to deal with than plastic. I should have gone with glass years ago.

I used only paper towels and Oxyclean to clean my buckets. Then soaked in Starsan solution. Still got contamination problems eventually.

You can get lucky and keep a bucket for 5+ years on occasion without issues. But then, one day, all of a sudden, it will happen to you. Beer will taste great at bottling/kegging time, and then a few weeks later… blam! Tastes sour or funky, for no apparent reason. Then you brew another batch and it turns out fine. And perhaps even another. And then the next batch, everything tastes just fine, and then a few weeks later… blam! Another oddball contaminated batch. After this happens a couple of times, you get pissed and replace all your buckets and hoses. Then things are great for a few more years. Then suddenly, you run into all the same issues again. Dammit. Time to buy all new buckets, AGAIN.

Or, you could just go with glass and be done with it, replacing just your hoses and any gaskets every few years.

Glass also significantly reduces the problem of oxidation. Plastic is permeable to oxygen. If you leave a beer sitting in plastic for 2-3 months (I know there’s at least a couple people out there who do that), watch out, your beer will likely get oxidized just from sitting in the permeable plastic for too long. With glass, of course, this will never be an issue.

So anyway. It only took 13 years for me to figure all this out. :wink:

[quote=“dmtaylo2”]Carboys ain’t too expensive, and not too much harder to deal with than plastic. I should have gone with glass years ago.

I used only paper towels and Oxyclean to clean my buckets. Then soaked in Starsan solution. Still got contamination problems eventually.

You can get lucky and keep a bucket for 5+ years on occasion without issues. But then, one day, all of a sudden, it will happen to you. Beer will taste great at bottling/kegging time, and then a few weeks later… blam! Tastes sour or funky, for no apparent reason. Then you brew another batch and it turns out fine. And perhaps even another. And then the next batch, everything tastes just fine, and then a few weeks later… blam! Another oddball contaminated batch. After this happens a couple of times, you get pissed and replace all your buckets and hoses. Then things are great for a few more years. Then suddenly, you run into all the same issues again. Dammit. Time to buy all new buckets, AGAIN.

Or, you could just go with glass and be done with it, replacing just your hoses and any gaskets every few years.

Glass also significantly reduces the problem of oxidation. Plastic is permeable to oxygen. If you leave a beer sitting in plastic for 2-3 months (I know there’s at least a couple people out there who do that), watch out, your beer will likely get oxidized just from sitting in the permeable plastic for too long. With glass, of course, this will never be an issue.

So anyway. It only took 13 years for me to figure all this out. :wink: [/quote]
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Honestly you can’t blame it on buckets. Could be anything.