Dear Better Bottle, I Love You

Strong words? Because it’s the best fermentor I’ve ever used. Until now, I’ve only ever used either plastic buckets or glass carboys. I finally grabbed a Better Bottle 6 Gallon Carboy and I love it. Not because it’s super durable and lighter than glass. Not because it’s easy to clean. Not because it can be used as a pretty sweet drum to annoy your wife.

I love it because it makes aeration easy. Because it is durable and light, I got my best aeration of any brew with the Irish Red I brewed yesterday. How’d I do it? Easy…

I filled it up with 5.5 gallons of my sweet Irish Red, then I stoppered it and put it on its side on my counter. I held the stopper and neck and shook the crap out of the big end by rolling/sliding it. I had wort sloshing around like mad in there for several minutes with very little effort.

Then, I added the yeast and rocked it for a bit to mix the yeast in well. By morning, a wonderful layer of krausen had formed at the top of my vigorously-fermenting wort. As I mentioned, this is the best I’ve seen when pitching at 65° and it took very little effort whatsoever.

I can’t believe it took me so long to shell out $25 for something that will save me from so many backaches (I know, someday I’ll say the same thing about an aquarium pump for aeration).