Beer Forum

I'm looking into getting a few 3 gallon carboys so I can take a 6 gallon batch, split it up into 3 small carboys with a different yeast or yeast combination in each one. The 3 gallon glass carboys are a reliable choice, but my wife has a bun in the oven and the less glass around the house the better. But the 3 gallon Better Bottle carboys are square shaped instead of circular, and I've heard that fermenting in square vessels creates awkward fermentations with dead fermentation zones in the corners and other off flavors. Does anybody have any experience with the 3 gallon Better Bottles and/or any advice on this decision? Thanks

I would say just get the glass.You wont want to leave your plastic bottles out for the kid to mess with, now would ya? I have never used the better bottle, and I dont think that I ever will.

For me the small benefit of glass does not out weight the negatives of glass(weight and the danger of slicing myself up)...I only use better bottles....unless I was to age something for 6 months or longer..

I have 2 of the 3 gallon better bottles and they work just fine...with smaller batch sizes the shape of the fermenter matters less and less...

I'm a big fan of the better bottles. I had a dozen carboys littering my basement floor and I finally got rid of the last of them yesterday. It's nice to have the space back. Carboys are heavy when full and fragile. I can stack the better bottles anywhere and don't have to worry about breakage if they fall. I have a couple of three gallon BB's but havn't used them yet. Let us know how they work for you if you go with the better bottles. A good experiment would be to split a batch between a Better Bottle and a glass carboy.
Good luck!

I just emailed Jamil about this recently. More than a year ago now he said that he was using better bottles. Turns out he's still using them. If those Heretic pilot batches are getting fermented in plastic, then that's good enough for me.

So on that information, I ordered two of the Morebeer PET carboys last week.

But I recall Jamil stating that BB have the cons of both carboys and buckets, that glass is the way to go.

Adam wrote:But I recall Jamil stating that BB have the cons of both carboys and buckets, that glass is the way to go.

yeah I also recall him saying that but that was back in like 2006....lol I believe he has now changed his tune on that subject...

scratching and oxygen permeation are the only problems with the better bottles...Scratching is easily avoided...a soak in PBW will remove even the worst stuck on krausen, And the oxygen permeation is only a problem over long aging, so like I said if I am aging less than 6 months the better bottles are the way to go...if you will be aging for a while then I would go with glass..

Now the Better bottle has none of the problems of a glass carboy.....weight and fragility...can't really fix those problems with the glass carboy...unless you want to make a pulley system to carry around your carboys...although the Haulers can help but do they help when you trying to clean the carboy? not sure they work well for dumping the carboys out....and they sure do get slippery when you are trying to clean them...

A lot of good advice! How long until Jamil finishes testing them out and develops a solid opinion and does anyone know what size BB's he's useing? The thing is I trust there oxygen permiability because I rarely ferment longer than 2 months, I'm just turmed off by the square corner's still. Does the smaller size really negate any effect you have from the corners?