Trouble comes in threes

[Big Dave]

Firstly, this happened

23l.JPG

A little upset as it is my new 23L carboy - aquired cheaply - but had noticed a small chip on the inside, so was wondering what to do with it. Was washing it and it cracked. Suppose better now then later.

Then this happened

45l.JPG

VVVVV upset - it contained three litres of newly filtered Lychee wine ready for bottling. Took the filter out of the top of the DJ, picked the DJ up and the base stayed on the bench - result was about three litres of sweet smelling Lychee wine gushed over me, the bench and the floor. Managed to get two bottles out of what was left, so not all bad!!

So, all wine related activites were brought to a halt and an extensive cleanup operation commenced.

Whats going to break next???

[ToulouseLePlot]

Lots of sympathy for you... that's my sort of day. My advice would be to buy a lottery ticket, something's bound to happen in the other direction!

[Cellar_Rat]

When buying large glass vesses I ALWAYS test them....
Wipe the top.
Use you hands to seal your mouth around the top and blow HARD.
Pretend you blowing up a balloon.
Release quickly - and you should hear a 'ring'

No ringee no buyee !!

[rjb222]

These are perfect examples of why I am moving away from glass to the better bottle carboy. I have had three in the last few months break very easily. For me it is a matter of employee safety more than wine loss. I do not want someone to get cut. Just common sense I think.

[Cellar_Rat]

what you really need is stainless steel with floaty leads. Lovely :-)
… or so you would think and then the lids start to leak

[Big Dave]

I wasn't too bothered about the carboy - I have a good supply of large PET vessels freely available. After I noticed the chip inside I knew it would be a weakness, and probably should have just binned it then. I tried to clean it (and was probably over rough) when it cracked. A quick tap with steel toe cap boot and the base came off.

But, The DJ totally shocked me - it has survived since before christmas, survived two rackings, a move pre-christmas to the shed, over winter outside, then back into the dining room after christmas. It wasn't marked, or chipped or cracked - the bottom just came off??

Loss of wine was a pain, but more importantly I'm now worried about handling the other DJ's I have.

Maybe a move to plastic would be a good one.....

[Cellar_Rat]

Yeah plastic is better. The large glass carboys are very good but as you say they are quite fragile.
Your comment about a quick with the steel toe cap boot, made me laugh out loud

[bigshug1960]

Oh dear, another thing to fret over I have recently bought 2 glass carbouys as most opinions seem to lean towards glass over plastic, especially when it comes to ageing. How long could a wine be aged in plastic ? I ask as it looks as though it is easier to buy Plastic online as glass delivery obviously has it's problems.

Regards Alan

[rjb222]

Oh dear, another thing to fret over I have recently bought 2 glass carboys as most opinions seem to lean towards glass over plastic, especially when it comes to aging. How long could a wine be aged in plastic ? I ask as it looks as though it is easier to buy Plastic online as glass delivery obviously has it's problems.

Regards Alan

The better bottle carboys are very good for longer term. Not the opaque plastic ones though they oxidize your wine quite rapidly. Keep your sulfite levels proper and all will be fine. The glass is though fragile the only material that is impervious to infiltrationtion of gasses or flavors or staining. It is a far superior in all aspects to plastic except for fragility of it.

[ToulouseLePlot]

Not everything with Better Bottle is perfect. 3 out of the 4 I had developed a problem:

spot1.jpg spot2.jpg

These spots are liquid-filled blisters on the inside of the vessel. I contacted BB who said they had only heard about this once before and had been unable to replicate the problem in their lab.

Discussing how it may have arisen I said that I used Milton as a steriliser (appropriately diluted) and might leave 4" of Milton solution in the bottom of a vessel inbetween batches. This was in breach of their technical instructions (on their website) and the dialogue broke down at that point without real conclusion.

The vessels were between 12-18 months old, the oldest vessel (3yrs now) is still working without displaying this flaw. (The other 3 are destined to be vegetable cloches as BB noted they don't know what the liquid in the blister is and you couldn't be sure it would be sterile). I've moved to the straight-sided cheaper equivalents.

[Cellar_Rat]

I have found a link on another website http://forum.northernbrewer.com/view...105292&start=0 discussing exactly the same thing.

Are you sure it is a blister with liquid in? Or is it bubble caused by the PET plastic de-laminating (most likely).

PM me I might have some ideas.

[Cellar_Rat]

… Don't cut them up yet

[SiSandrine]

Not had this problem (or any problem actually) with the ones that Duffbeer supplies. I have had some wine in them ageing for 12 months with no ill effects. The other thing I would say, and CellarRat may back me up is that wine needs tiny amounts of oxygen to help it age. That is one of the advantages of wooden barrels and therefore if there is a tiny amount of permeability with Better Bottles then does it matter? My view based on practice is that they can be used as a substitute for wooden barrels so keeping something in them for years would probably over oxidise the contents but bottle within a year is probably the way to go anyway.

[Cellar_Rat]

Spot on Simon. I couldn't have put it better myself.
I have said it before but I do think as winemakers we are becoming air-phobic. Wine needs to breathe - as those bottling in screw-cap bottles have found out.

[ToulouseLePlot]

shrivel.jpg

I discovered I can't upload a pic in PM, so the rest of the world can share this tedious message, sorry about that, rest of world. Anyway, as there are many BB owners out there, it may be of some interest...

Interesting that you found that thread and interested in ideas you may have. I haven't cut open the BB yet, but prodding the bubble with a long, sharp spike when I first saw the problem it certainly seemed to release liquid. Now, 5 months or so later, they have been in a dry outhouse and the spots look like the above.

To me that looks like the blister has dried out. So I'd say it was filled with liquid before.