Plastic Secondary Fermentation

Personally, I like 3 gallon experimental batches.

Make some slightly sweet strawberry wine for wifey. Most women love the stuff and it is the closest thing to liquid panty hose remover.

Depends on the type of plastic. Some types (like the PET that Better Bottles are made out of) have negligible O2 permeability. Others are more permeable and may oxidize your wine. I believe that milk jugs are generally made from HDPE, which would fall into the latter group. If you're only planning on aging for a few months, HDPE would *probably* be okay, but it's not a risk that I personally would be willing to take.

I believe a better source of containers would be juice bottles, which are often made from PET or even glass.

On a numbr of occassions, I have ventured into the organic foods store nearby and purchased half gallon bottles of organic milk. The milk is good for my coffee - and the half gallon jars are perfect for top-up batches of wine, and for projects like yours.

Personally, I'd never trust my wines to some dispensable plastic containers.

I'd have to weigh in with the writers thus far Wayne.

But I can offer a potentially very useful source of fermenters... Y could do a lot worse than checking out Freecycle online. It is run via yahoo groups (go to

to find your nearest group). Freecycle is a worldwide network where people give you their unwanted old stuff and all that they ask in return is that you collect it!

In a 4 month period I harvested over 2 DOZEN 1 gallon glass demijohns from 6 different Freecylers! The great thing is that you are doing them a favour by taking the stuff out of their way! The way it works is that you join the yahoo group then offer almost anything you like (non adult, non weapon, non alcohol, non living). You only have to offer one thing then you can make requests. You can ask if anyone has spare demijohns or just hunt around the posts to see if someone is currently offering any. I was in a similar boat with my wife and she was more than happy I was getting these things for free!

Good hunting, Jim

Wayne,

like the other responders I'm not fussy about the plastic jugs . They would probably be OK for short term stuff (1 month?).

I just wanted to mention that you might be better off finding what size of bung fits the plastic jug rather than fiddling with a hole in the top. Although, tops are cheap (free) if the first try doesn't work.

Unfortunately, I don't have a milk jug at hand (recycling was yesterday - and we bought a carton this week). I would guess a #6. So a #6 1/2 might work fine, but sit a little high.

Steve

I would not do this because it usually only takes a few phone calls to local restaurants to get all the 3 and 4 liter glass jugs you will ever want. Once you find someone who uses them they are usually more than happy to set them aside for you. Glass is just so easy to clean and predictable.

Friday through the weekends they get pretty busy and the general purpose red and white jug wines sold in restaurants and bars often come in literal jugs rather than boxes around here.

Joe