6 Gallon Better Bottle PET Carboy

I used the Better Bottle as a primary fermentation vessel for my first mead, and it worked very well! I would have loved to have gone with glass, but it was simply too expensive for me as someone just taking up the hobby. The Better Bottle is of high quality and very lightweight. I would suggest getting a handle for one of these when they are full, as it gets quite heavy! I did worry about getting scratches, so I used it carefully and I keep it in a closed box when not in use just to be on the safe side. Overall, it's a great product for someone starting off in home brewing and I would definitely recommend to anyone! Midwest shipped it quickly and was very affordable, so that is just another plus for an already great product. BTW, the mead came out amazing :)

I ordered 4 of these bottles believing that conventional stoppers and airlocks were the same as that for the 6 gallon glass carboys. They are not. These bottles have a wider neck ID and the necks are the same size as a standard 5 gallon water cooler bottle. In fact the caps for the water bottles snap right onto these bottles. This should have been stated in the description.When I was looking at the item Amazon's site also recommended the same stoppers that are TOO SMALL for these bottles. If they required a special cap it should have been stated in the description.The items that arrived said the bottles were also ported. I see no evidence of that either.Except for the stopper issue above they appear to be fine bottles. They are truly lightweight. I thought the boxes were empty when I picked them up. They are a bit thin so be careful not to collapse them if picking up a full bottle. Lift by the bottom and not the sides.

I bought this carboy to replace a 6.5 gallon glass carboy that I apparently set down wrong. It broke. Glad I'd bottled the one before I did that! The new plastic Better Bottle is much lighter and presumably less breakable. Much easier for me to lift to the counter so I can rack the wine. My only beef with it is that it is 6 gallons and not 6.5. I would like the extra space because I do my first state ferment in the carboy and not in a bucket. Even with the 6.5 gallon carboys, I sometimes have them bubble over. I plan to use this for all parts of the wine making process with the exception of the first ferment.

Be aware that the opening to this carboy is HUGE! You will not be able to use a standard bung with airlock. As a new wine maker, it would be really nice for that to have been more clearly stated. I wasted money on the wrong bung/airlocks. Now I am spending even more money - really needless. Thanks Better Bottle for nothing!

I have several months of brewing under my belt and have always been using buckets. However, the lids on the buckets are almost always not air tight so leaving the beer in there for longer than 2-3 weeks may be an issue. Also, the fermenting beer is more likely to attract fruit flies.I was considering then to upgrade to a carboy, mainly to do secondary fermentations with fruit additions. I was initially more in favor of glass, given the concerns about plastics leaching chemicals -- there is no BPA in PET, but if you follow the news all plastics leach some plasticizers in small quantities and the effects of some of those substances are not well understood. Yet, after reading all the horror stories of ER visits from shattering glass carboys on home brew talk forums, I decided for the PET Better Bottle. Sure, it's still plastic and it probably leaches a minute amount of plasticizers into my beer but that is a risk that is orders of magnitude smaller compared to the frequent bursting/shattering glass carboys and dealing with severed tendons and nerves.Clean up of the carboy is a breeze. Since PET is non-wetting, gunk does not stick to it as readily, just let it sit overnight with some PBW or One Step and done! The carboy is light, a child can lift it. Note you do need the #10 stopper as other reviewers comment (or the spendy Better Bottle airlock system). Highly Recommended.

They ARE lighter, but as a trade off you deal with other issues, this may help:Don't move it after filling/capping as the bottle bulges and then contracts, sucking down the sanitizer in the airlock.You can't use a bottle brush due to the risk of scratching the surface, so you must fill and shake the crud out of it or spray... it may be just as clean but makes me wary.Small issue but the stoppers are a different size so if you have a fleet of glass carboys, this is a one off that requires you to purchase new corks.Now that I have this in a couple sizes, I'll use them, but there's just something about solid, heavy duty glass that makes me prefer it since I have no issues hefting them.

This bottle works fine. The label says to avoid liquids over 140ºF, so if you're pasteurizing ingredients before they go in, you have to let them cool. Of course, you don't have that problem with glass, but it's not too much of an inconvenience.If I had it to do over again, I'd get the kind with the built-in spout, which would make kegging much easier. On the bright side, the neck is big enough for a large auto-siphon, which makes fairly quick work of transfers.The bottle cleans easily, but does retain some smell after sanitizing. I've used them to make several batches of hard cider, and the apple smell remains after each batch.