Polethylene long term storage

[clayhill]

I asked this question of plastic for wine storage from a supplier, his answer was . . .

The smaller polytanks are not described by the manufacturers as 'wine tanks', they are fruit juice tanks, which means they are fine for fermentation but storage of wine in the long term does slightly alter the wine character, it is not as 'fresh' as if stored in stainless steel or glass.

As I am not doing enough to justify stainless or oak then it's 54 litre carboys for me. I managed to get 6 from ebay the other week for £46 and i'm purchasing another 4 from my supplier @ £39-50 each.

Regards

Dale

[chris_b]

I had another look round Solent Plastics and found some 25 litre jerry-cans without taps in food-grade polyetheylene at £7.30 each, so I bought a couple. They will stack vertically, I'm not sure how high when full, but one on top should be ok. They smell of plastic inside (no surprise) so I'm going to give them a good clean out and try one with a bottle of shop-bought red and lots of CO2 to fill the space. Keep it for a bit and compare with another bottle of the same. If that goes ok I'll try last years' vintage, keeping half in a full better bottle and half in a full one of these and see how it tastes over time.

[lockwood1956]

I honestly think that storage in these will be folly....can you afford to waste the wine?

[koomber]

Rich pointed out that the bigger problem as opposed to air permiability, is the head space above the wine. It's pretty huge.

[Cellar_Rat]

I used these with co2 on top. But that was to top fill the final inch. Mixed gas works too, is better, but a pita to get easily.

[fatbloke]

I know they're mentioned but didn't notice whether I "defined" it......

The big square looking plastic tanks, in a metal cage are, as someone else pointed out, known as IBC's. Which in turn, is the abbreviation for "Intermediate bulk containers".

Can't recall the height (1.5 metre's ???), but their footprint is that of a standard pallet i.e. 1000x1200mm.

I believe they hold 1000 lites and if you made enough wine to fill one, then you'd also have to scour ebay for a used forklift cos there's no way in hell you'll move it any other way.

Just thought I'd explain that............ (it's got bog all to do with me being stuck in a back street in Lincoln having just loaded 27500kg of garden compost - and being bored out of my tiny mind)

regards

jtfb

[owlwithoutfeathers]

And yes, I prefer glass for ageing, though I'm more than happy to ferment in plastics....

regards

jtfb

p.s. Oh and to me, short term is about the 6 months mark. I have some meads that I'm expecting to be in the glass for years (got a couple that qualify as 2 years now....)[/QUOTE]

Okay folks, firstly, apologies for reigniting a thread that was well documented last year. Perhaps my ability to use the search facility on this site isnt as good as everyone else's (i go to search, type in for instance PET and then get threads upon threads - but they all start from the begining of the threads so i have to trawl through those!)

I digress . . .

I'm going to go ahead and use some supermarket water (5 litre) PET bottles as demijohns for fermentation of Wine Number 1. I've bought some grommets and will drill a hole in the caps and attach an airlock.

So far so good. Opinion on this fourm and others is that these are fine to ferment in. Okay; my question is what about "short term storage"?

Going on this thread, i think that popular opinion is anything less than say 6 months is short term? I dont envisage WN1 to need that length of time to "age" and look forward to drinking it young - say at 2 months (or less depending on clearing time)? if this is the case, what is popular opinion (or scientific opinion?!) on 2,3,4 or even 6 month storage in these austere answers to my epich search for an alternative to rocking-horse glass demis?

Thanks.

Owl.