Carboy Carrier Strap by Brew Hauler

I have a chest freezer that I use to control my fermentation temperature and I always feared to drop one of my carboy when I transfer them. With this carrier, its a fear of the past! I fit very well around my 5 gallons carboy, is easy to clean and easy to remove and reinstall if required. I would recommend anybody that carry glass carboy for more than 1 meter to get one of these.

The clamp to hold it together works fine but makes me nervous so I was very uneasy about using it but after 3 uses I have no complaints.

This piece of junk cost me a 5 gal carboy, $200 in spilled wine, and 10 hours of cleanup as the wine seeped under the PVC flooring in our garage. Thought the idea was to protect one's back, not hurt it by heavy labor. I was very lucky I escaped without any major cuts by the glass shrapnels flying everywhere.In my case the handles held up but the issue was with the vertical straps. They move around freely along the horizontal straps. I guess the idea is to accommodate carboys of different sizes but it makes for a flimsy product. The end result for me was that the space between two straps became too large and the carboy slipped through. Obviously, the danger of this happening increases for full carboys.I've been making wine for twenty years now. In that time I broke only one carboy and that was when using this hauler. Needless to say, I'm not happy. Good tools are great but badly designed tools are a waste of time and money.

After doing some online reading about carboy breakage and the dangers of carrying them around by hand, I decided to invest in a few of these. The straps are heavy duty enough that I'm not worried about anything failing while lugging carboys around. Way less awkward and way safer than carrying them around by hand. Even without the safety issue, I think the ease of carrying carboys is worth the investment.

I bought one of these because I was tired of lifting 5-6 gallons of wort into my fermentation chamber (swamp cooler setup). I also noticed that even though I use PET carboys, my hands can lose grip and drop the wort everywhere. Worse would be if I dropped it after it fermented and I lost actual beer. Sad.This is a fairly simple design but one person did mention that it would be nice if there was a second belt below the first to keep the straps in place. There is minimum fidgeting that needs to be done but it is just enough to make you think the second belt is a great idea.This is one of those purchases that you may think is silly and not worth even the $10 price tag, but it is. I cannot tell you how much easier it is to move carboys around especially on brew day after I've racked from my brew kettle to my carboy and I have to walk the carboy into the house. I do carry the carboy low still and almost waddle too and from but that is because I read about a strap breaking and I worry. At best, if a strap snaps I assume I'm close enough to the ground where I may save my beer. I don't think the straps are defective and it is possible the reviewer just got a one in a million dud, but you can never be too safe.I had one and ended up getting another as a gift. These also seem to do fine if I leave them submerged in water, which is how I control the temp of my fermentation. I appreciate that there are no metal parts for that reason alone.