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Lost my first carboy yesterday.

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Wish you a speedy recovery. I have been sitting on the fence trying to decide between glass or plastic when I expand larger than the 1-gallon carbon. I have read a lot of postings like this while reading the MLD list and the threads on this site. I may start leaning towards plastic.
 
icedmetal said:
I'm definitely not switching away from glass; I've got 20+ carboys still ;) What I think I will do is experiment a bit, and try to find gloves that can grip a carboy slicked with PBW. Hopefully I can find a combination of better grip and a bit of hand protection to stave off any repeats.
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Speaking from the glass industry that I have been associated with for the last 30 years. Wet glass and gloves do NOT work, period. This is a recipe you can not afford to try. If glass is dry they are a wonderful asset and will serve you well. If you wish for protective gear when handling glass I will be glad to point you in the right direction.

TB
 
oldwhiskers said:
Wish you a speedy recovery. I have been sitting on the fence trying to decide between glass or plastic when I expand larger than the 1-gallon carbon. I have read a lot of postings like this while reading the MLD list and the threads on this site. I may start leaning towards plastic.
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I really like my plastic carboy. :)
 
Tannin Boy said:
Speaking from the glass industry that I have been associated with for the last 30 years. Wet glass and gloves do NOT work, period. This is a recipe you can not afford to try. If glass is dry they are a wonderful asset and will serve you well. If you wish for protective gear when handling glass I will be glad to point you in the right direction.

TB
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Please do point me in the right direction :)

I always thought that if/when I had a problem handling a carboy, it would be full. So to some extent, I may have been less cautious than I should have been. Other than being very cautious (and I can assure you, I will be now!) what can you recommend safety-wise while handling a wet carboy?
 
icedmetal said:
5 gallons of mead vs 18 stitches. Am I sick to actually need to mull that over some? I find myself wanting to side with the stitches! Losing 5 gallons of aged product would probably bring a tear to my eye.
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My first thought was, "Oh, at least he had finished bottling and didn't lose a batch!" then, "Oh, wait, stitches? ... 18 STITCHES?! HOLY CRAP."

Nice slice, hope it gets better soon... As my dad always said, if you're gonna do something, do a good job of it, don't go halfway... my only experience with hand injury so far <knocks on head to touch wood> has been bruised and split knuckles from sparring (direct hits with unpadded wooden sword), and that's quite bad enough...

I generally do not wash the outside of my carboys at the same time I wash the inside, after one very close call with a 3-gal glass carboy when I had pink cleanser on my hands (although who knows, it mighta bounced off the linoleum)... So since "Chevette Girl is a total klutz" is a given, I work around that... I make up my solution, pour it into the carboy and get in there with the brush, or hold it securely and shake, shake, shake... I also now try to keep my hands out of the cleaning solution... then dump the solution, and for rinsing, upstairs I have an auxiliary sprayer on the kitchen faucet and downstairs I have my bottle blaster (works pretty well for 3-gal, we'll see how it works on 5 gal once everything's down there, and if it doesn't, I have a hose end that attaches to the laundry tub faucet too)... Then I wipe down the outside with a cloth once the inside's done and it's set down somewhere stable... I also always handle my carboys with one hand around the neck, the only ones that don't have a useful lip to prevent slippage are the plastic ones which I only use temporarily because they're not see-through.
 
Sorry to hear about your accident! I had a similar accident last month with a 15 liter glass carboy. In my case, however, I had just added french oak chips to this carboy containing a 6 month old traditional mead. So, it was full to the brim. I was carrying it into our storage area, when it shattered, sending mead and glass pieces everywhere. Miraculously, I didn't get cut. The friend with whom I make mead started screaming like crazy (I can't really repeat what he was repeating over and over again, like a mantra) and I froze for more than a minute in the same position I was in when the carboy decided to self-destruct.

We concluded that old carboys like the one we were using have imperfections and micro-fissures that make them very fragile when full and sometimes submitting them to torsion/pulling movements might cause them to shatter violently. So, we are now using a tipe of wicker basket to carry the glass carboys around, and we try to move them very little when they are full. Having said that, we use plastic carboys for fermenting and the first racking, moving the mead to the glass carboy for aging at the second racking. We are also thinking of getting/making some sort of small wheeled contraption to carry the carboys around, avoiding lifting them more than necessary.

We have also stopped using PBW to sanitise carboys, and use iodophor (povidone-iodine) instead. Not only it is cheaper, but it requires less swilling around of carboys. There's an article about using iodophor in brewing here

I hope you heal promptly!
 
More carnage! It's starting to heal now...
finger3.jpg
 
Wow, that must have been scary before it was put back together... like your finger was practically sliced in half the long way!

I'm impressed you didn't take out that tendon on the back of the finger, stroke of luck that was!
 
AToE said:
Wow, that must have been scary before it was put back together... like your finger was practically sliced in half the long way!

I'm impressed you didn't take out that tendon on the back of the finger, stroke of luck that was!
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Yeah, it looked pretty crazy. The doctor said he could see the tendon casing, but it was undamaged.

Here's hoping they're my last battle scars for a long time.

...and kids, don't try this at home. :p
 
I've never lost a carboy but did bounce a full one off a brick hearth in the living room. I've been using regular old plastic milk cartons to sit my carboys in since then. They protect the glass from getting bounced and have handles for picking them up with. That's a real nasty gash you picked up on your finger, glad you will be ok. Just remember chicks think scars are cool.
 
wayneb said:
Hard earned battle scars!
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Definitely--them's braggin' scars.

I am so careful when handling carboys because I'm terrified of this sort of accident--I can imagine the grief my doc would give me when I came in to get the stitches taken out.

Most of my carboys I got from a couple who hadn't used them in 20 years, and had been making wine in them for a long time before that. I hope they're not stressed from that long use!

My milk crates are sounding better and better, anyway.
 
Hey Icedmetal, hope you're healing up nicely...

I lost a carboy today, my very first (I believe it may have been the very first carboy I ever bought)... The bad news is it's gone, the good news is nobody's hurt, and I haven't used it in years (translucent instead of clear plastic) so it's no longer collecting dust and spiders in the basement, and fortunately it was plastic, and full of water and not wine when it was dropped (long story involving snow, thirsty horses, Chevettes and tearing up a driveway to find a leaking well), AND it was dropped ouside and not on a floor or in the Chevette... if I can ever figure out how to post a pic, I'll add it in, blew one side of the bottom right out, I wish I'd seen it happen but it was my friend who dropped it while I was in the barn, she was very relieved when I told her it didn't matter...
 
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