BeerBorg

I have been homebrewing with BD and similar easy kits for a couple years. I made a post about growler cap suggestions - I have been carbonating my wort after fermentation in 32 and 64 oz growlers.

-Yep, growlers. Just using my judgement, they seemed sturdier than the thin plastic bottles that came with the BD starter kit... little did I know this is some kind of no-no. Weird, since all the amazon reviews I read when purchasing them read 'great for home brewing...'

So anyway, what DO you guys use for carbonating a 5 gallon wort if not using growlers? Thanks!

When I went to 5 gallon batches, I bought a kegerator.

My bottling was kind of a journey. I started with PET bottles, then went to flippies (grolsch, fishers, etc), then finally glass bottles with a capper.

I used 12 oz bottles from craft beer. I got mine from my local beer distributor for the 5c return.

I'm another one that used 12 oz brown beer bottles. I either kept bottles from commercial beers that I could get the labels off easily, or I just bought brand new bottles at the supply store. Eventually, I went to kegs.

If want to stay with bottling instead of kegs, then 12 oz pop top (non twist-off) batch primmed with a bench capper is a good way to go.

15+ yrs bottling with 16 & 32 oz (.5 & 1 L) PETs and reusable caps.

guess you'd need 18-20 of the 1-Ls to package a 5G batch ...

John Sand wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 8:01 am I used 12 oz bottles from craft beer. I got mine from my local beer distributor for the 5c return.

ok thanks. So why would growler glass be more dangerous than craft beer bottles? Not sure if I should stop something that is working just because a few home brewers said it's not a good idea.

bpgreen wrote: ↑Tue Jul 12, 2022 11:31 pm When I went to 5 gallon batches, I bought a kegerator.

My bottling was kind of a journey. I started with PET bottles, then went to flippies (grolsch, fishers, etc), then finally glass bottles with a capper.

ok thanks. So why would growler glass be more dangerous than craft beer bottles? Not sure if I should stop something that is working just because a few home brewers said it's not a good idea.

Growlers aren't really designed to hold full pressure for long periods of time. They're designed to hold lower pressure for a few days.

...even when they say "great for homebrewing?" Does that mean great for bottling in something else, and pouring into these growlers for a few days?

Who said "great for homebrewing", the seller or reviewers?

Can you post a link to the growlers you have?

I could see filling a growler with homebrew from a kegerator and bringing it to a picnic pr something like that. So a growler would be great for homebrewing in that sense.

There are also some specialized containers that are described as growlers, but are designed to hold pressure for longer periods of time (for example, growlerwerks ukeg). To me, these are more like mini kegs than growlers. They stay sealed and dispense from a tap using pressure from CO2 cartridges.

If you like the growlers, go ahead and use them. I'm not saying one is better than the other, I just answered your question about bottling.
I like the kegs even better. Quicker to fill and carb, easy to tap half a beer or two. The biggest shortcoming of kegs is that I can only keep two different beers in my 4.4cuft kegerator.

11bcollins11 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 9:34 pm

John Sand wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 8:01 am I used 12 oz bottles from craft beer. I got mine from my local beer distributor for the 5c return.

ok thanks. So why would growler glass be more dangerous than craft beer bottles? Not sure if I should stop something that is working just because a few home brewers said it's not a good idea.

On your original post sounded like you wanted to switch to a different method so that’s how most answered, I see nothing wrong with using growlers if work for you, everyone has their own little way of brewing and the end results is beer. So if growlers work for you then that is good. I can tell ‘ya I have a couple growlers that I fill out of my taps to give to friends to take home and are nice carb for a few days but then start loosing, now I can’t tell you if was because co2 from a tank or co2 from priming with sugar is different should be the same, well anyways do what works for you, and if it don’t work you will try something different. People here have experimented and try to help new brewers with short cuts and failed experiments