2 liter plastic

Pat Kennedy

IMHO, you can get away with using your 2 liter soda bottle, but you will get a little flavor from whatever was previously in the bottle. Mild flavored sodas or club sodatonic water bottles minimize this cross-contamination of flavors. I cold stabilize some of my small experimental batches of wine in the refrigerator in 2 liter club soda bottles.

I've also cold stabilized fruit wines in 1-2 gallon white cranberry juice plastic bottles, but I wanted a touch of cranberry flavor anyway.

Please also keep in mind that the plastic soda bottles contain very small amounts of partially polymerized plastic (intentional, needed to keep the PET plastic soft... they do that in lieu of adding other plasticizers). The alcohol in the wine will extract traces of the partially polymerized stuff, so I wouldn't choose to keep wine in plastic soda bottles on a regular basis. I keep some 48 ounce glbutt juice bottles for my excess storage. No contamination, and the wider mouth makes it easier to fill and empty.

BTW, what reason do you choose for not using an open top fermenter for your primary fermentation? A new, 5 gallon, food grade plastic bucket would work well too (i.e. NSF rated HDPE bucket).

Gene