A moment of silence

[Bart Goddard]

Today is a day that will live in infamy. I just broke
the second carboy of my brewing career. So I'm averaging
one per decade. (Sharply up from yesterday's average of
0.5 per decade.) It was, thankfully, empty. But is there
any way of breaking a carboy that doesn't involve a
concrete slab?

I'll be spending a good bit of time with the keggerator
of consolation.

B.

[Tom Biasi]

Post by Bart Goddard
Today is a day that will live in infamy. I just broke
the second carboy of my brewing career. So I'm averaging
one per decade. (Sharply up from yesterday's average of
0.5 per decade.) It was, thankfully, empty. But is there
any way of breaking a carboy that doesn't involve a
concrete slab?
I'll be spending a good bit of time with the keggerator
of consolation.
B.

My condolences,

I have broken two in 40 years. The last 10 years or so I have been using
stainless fermenters so my numbers are cooked a little.
I assure you there are ways to break one without the use of a concrete
slab but the aforementioned method is quite effective.
You could leave one full of cleaner on the back deck and it freezes
solid, the opening is too small to accommodate the expansion but the
glass will.

Tom

[baloonon]

Post by Tom Biasi

Post by Bart Goddard
Today is a day that will live in infamy. I just broke
the second carboy of my brewing career. So I'm averaging
one per decade. (Sharply up from yesterday's average of
0.5 per decade.) It was, thankfully, empty. But is there
any way of breaking a carboy that doesn't involve a
concrete slab?

I have broken two in 40 years. The last 10 years or so I have been
using stainless fermenters so my numbers are cooked a little.
I assure you there are ways to break one without the use of a concrete
slab but the aforementioned method is quite effective.
You could leave one full of cleaner on the back deck and it freezes
solid, the opening is too small to accommodate the expansion but the
glass will.

Funny thing, I was just googlin' around a bit to try to get a sense of
what is a smart cushion of temperature difference for avoiding thermal
shock and cracking regular glass. Does anyone have a good safe limit?

In other words, if my mason jar is 72F, adding liquid that is 73F isn't
going to be a problem, but adding boiling liquid (150 degrees hotter
than the jar) may cause a horrible break. What's a good safe upper
limit? +50 degrees? +75 degrees? Something else?

[Tom Biasi]

Post by baloonon

Post by Tom Biasi

Post by Bart Goddard
Today is a day that will live in infamy. I just broke
the second carboy of my brewing career. So I'm averaging
one per decade. (Sharply up from yesterday's average of
0.5 per decade.) It was, thankfully, empty. But is there
any way of breaking a carboy that doesn't involve a
concrete slab?

I have broken two in 40 years. The last 10 years or so I have been
using stainless fermenters so my numbers are cooked a little.
I assure you there are ways to break one without the use of a concrete
slab but the aforementioned method is quite effective.
You could leave one full of cleaner on the back deck and it freezes
solid, the opening is too small to accommodate the expansion but the
glass will.

Funny thing, I was just googlin' around a bit to try to get a sense of
what is a smart cushion of temperature difference for avoiding thermal
shock and cracking regular glass. Does anyone have a good safe limit?
In other words, if my mason jar is 72F, adding liquid that is 73F isn't
going to be a problem, but adding boiling liquid (150 degrees hotter
than the jar) may cause a horrible break. What's a good safe upper
limit? +50 degrees? +75 degrees? Something else?

You should check the manufacture's specs.
Jars made for canning are quite tolerant, as is Pyrex®.

Tom

[Ecnerwal]

Post by baloonon
Funny thing, I was just googlin' around a bit to try to get a sense of
what is a smart cushion of temperature difference for avoiding thermal
shock and cracking regular glass. Does anyone have a good safe limit?
In other words, if my mason jar is 72F, adding liquid that is 73F isn't
going to be a problem, but adding boiling liquid (150 degrees hotter
than the jar) may cause a horrible break. What's a good safe upper
limit? +50 degrees? +75 degrees? Something else?

A good limit is "get thyself a chiller" so you are not putting hot stuff
in a carboy. I use a simple immersion coil, homemade. I THINK the
"limit" may vary somewhat with what the temperature is (ie, could be a
different number of "degrees above" if starting from 40 or 100 rather
than 72) but have not made controlled experiments to verify that.

When using the carboy washer, I start warm and move to hot over a bit of
time, to be safe. On the other hand, I rarely worry so much about
bottles, and have not had one break due to wash water that I know of
(though I guess that might be what happened to one of my old (darn near
antique) returnable Coke bottles that has a crack in the thick bottom.)

Mason jars may or not be the same as "regular glass" though I'm not
terribly convinced that they are Pyrex (borosilicate, to be
non-brand-specific) really, so they are probably fairly close to regular
glass if they are any different.

[baloonon]

Post by Ecnerwal

Post by baloonon
Funny thing, I was just googlin' around a bit to try to get a
sense of what is a smart cushion of temperature difference for
avoiding thermal shock and cracking regular glass. Does anyone
have a good safe limit?
In other words, if my mason jar is 72F, adding liquid that is
73F isn't going to be a problem, but adding boiling liquid
(150 degrees hotter than the jar) may cause a horrible break.
What's a good safe upper
limit? +50 degrees? +75 degrees? Something else?

A good limit is "get thyself a chiller" so you are not putting
hot stuff in a carboy.

I use a chiller for big batches of wort, but they're not much good for
cooling a liter or two of boiled DME for starter, which is what I pour
into jars.

I'd love to be able to pour near-boiling starter mix into a jar or two
to let it cool so I can clean the pot and be done with the kitchen for a
while, but I'm always a bit wary of pouring superhot liquid into room
temp jars. There's always the ice bath option for the boiling hot pot,
but often someone forgets to refill the ice cube tray, and I'd prefer
not to waste the water for a plain water bath, plus this time of year
the cold water coming out of the tap isn't very cold.

Post by Ecnerwal
Mason jars may or not be the same as "regular glass" though I'm not
terribly convinced that they are Pyrex (borosilicate, to be
non-brand-specific) really, so they are probably fairly close to
regular glass if they are any different.

I think the safe assumption is that they're regular glass. Like I said,
I'm sure they're fine for liquid one degree hotter than the glass, and
it's dicey for liquid 150 degrees hotter. Somewhere in that +1 to +150
range is the sensible upper limit for how hot the starter wort can be
when you pour it into the jar, but I'm not sure what that would be.

[Ecnerwal]

Post by baloonon
I'd love to be able to pour near-boiling starter mix into a jar or two
to let it cool so I can clean the pot and be done with the kitchen for a
while

Preheat the jars. For canning jars, borrow techniques from canning....
Put them on a rack in a pot with a lid and 1/4" of water, boil the water
for a few minutes, turn off the heat, pour in boiling hot liquid, no
problem.

[Bob F]

Post by Ecnerwal

Post by baloonon
I'd love to be able to pour near-boiling starter mix into a jar or
two to let it cool so I can clean the pot and be done with the
kitchen for a while

Preheat the jars. For canning jars, borrow techniques from canning....
Put them on a rack in a pot with a lid and 1/4" of water, boil the
water for a few minutes, turn off the heat, pour in boiling hot
liquid, no problem.

Or, pour in a little of the hot liquid, then swirl/shake it so that the liguid
gets to all the surface and heats it up more evenly. Then add some more and
repeat, until the jars is really hot, at which time you can add the rest.

[T.J. Higgins]

Post by Bart Goddard
But is there
any way of breaking a carboy that doesn't involve a
concrete slab?

I was cleaning one over the bathtub when it slipped out of my
wet hands and shattered on the side of the tub. Gashed my leg
pretty good, took a few stitches to close the wound. Not my
finest moment!

[Steve Bonine]

Post by Bart Goddard
Today is a day that will live in infamy. I just broke
the second carboy of my brewing career. So I'm averaging
one per decade. (Sharply up from yesterday's average of
0.5 per decade.) It was, thankfully, empty. But is there
any way of breaking a carboy that doesn't involve a
concrete slab?

I broke mine by dropping it about an inch into the large plastic bin
that was to be used as a cooling water bath for primary fermentation. I
use this technique when the ambient temperature is a bit higher than I
want; I drop a frozen 1-gallon bottle of water into the bath a couple of
times a day and it keeps the yeasties happy.

This was an interesting batch. The wort ended up in the plastic bin,
which had not yet been filled with water. We transferred it to another
carboy, straining out the glass, and went ahead with the fermentation -
nothing to lose at that point. In spite of the fact that the bin had
not been sanitized, the resulting beer was imminently drinkable ... good
luck on our part, and not an indication that we should in the future
dispense with sanitation.

Also not sufficiently traumatic to motivate me to switch away from glass
carboys.

Post by Bart Goddard
I'll be spending a good bit of time with the keggerator
of consolation.

Good plan.