Can I use a green color carboy to ferment mead? (noob question inside)

[leuserboi]

Hi everyone, this is my first post here and, of course, I have a newbie question
I want to start making some mead but there are no brewing stores here so I bought a lot of stuff online, from yeasts to nutrients, airlocks, etc. However it's not easy to buy carboys online (the shipping charges are too much for me) however here it's pretty common to transport wine in 5L carboys and I can buy plenty of those easily. Now comes the noob question:
Every carboy I've seen on the internet is transparent and colorless. Herepretty much every single carboy has a green or brown tone, like the ones on the left in this picture: http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/7605/dsc5112e.jpg

The question is, can I use carboys like these to ferment mead? I know it may sound strange, but I don't know, maybe yeasts don't like light coming though a green glass but since the carboys fermenting mead should be in a dark place, I believe there is no problem.

So this is my question, I hope someone can answer

 

[mannye]

It's fine! Yeast don't care. People use plastic soda bottles and seem to have success. You're good.

 

[leuserboi]

nice, I'm going to try to do a batch or two. since they will be kept in a dark place, I also believe the glass color will not be a problem..I hope ahah

 

[Riverat]

nice, I'm going to try to do a batch or two. since they will be kept in a dark place, I also believe the glass color will not be a problem..I hope ahah

Heck if anything tinted glass is a good thing since avoiding light exposure is a universal theme with brewers, vintners and mazers

 

[skunkboy]

I use green and brown 4 liter bottles with no issues

 

[runningman683]

UV rays can cause problems, green and colored glass bottles block more of them than clear bottles do. That's what they're made for, that's why decent beers come in colored bottles.

For fermentation, it shouldn't make any difference unless you like having a "clear" view of the must.

 

[leuserboi]

thanks for the answers, I will try it with the green carboys then. I will post results in the future

 

[Thomas Riisbjerg]

You might want to do your actual fermentation in (food grade) plastic buckets, it's far easier to manage. Then once the fermentation is done, you can rack your mead into one of those carboys for aging.

 

[fatbloke]

You might want to do your actual fermentation in (food grade) plastic buckets, it's far easier to manage. Then once the fermentation is done, you can rack your mead into one of those carboys for aging.

Meh ! Traditional type recipes are OK in carboy type bottles, as long as they're aerated etc, but with any fruit in the recipe "easier to manage" is an understatement Thomas.

Obviously it depends whether there's enough fruit debris in the batch to form a cap or not, but all the ones I've tried that have got a fruit element or even my occasional wine has that criteria and need stirring to break up the fruit cap, degas and aerate etc, all at the same time - generally it's only needed for the first 1/3rd of the ferment but it may continue to be necessary - like with my fresh wine grape pyment, etc......

I've got a couple of brown glass jugs like that, but haven't seen any green glass ones. Nice looking and eminently suitable for batches that use pigment heavy fruit.......