BeerBorg

No more LBK's for me either. I'm using big mouth Bubbler glass fermentors - Kegging everything & now I have a beer gun too for filling bottles. Love the beer gun.

My fridge won't fit a Spiedel fermenter (sheds a tear) so I'm going to have to pull the trigger on either a Big Mouth Bubbler or a Better Bottle on my next trip to MoreBeer. Whichever they have in stock is coming home with me. God forbid if they have both and I have to make a decision.

I love the 3 gallon better bottles. The plastic they use is far superior to the LBKs, and the shape allows two to fit in my fermentation chamber quite nicely. You can get a version with a spigot (I don't have those... I siphon out). The only drawback is cleaning is a bit challenging. I got a long wanded bendable sponge cleaner (similar to the brush ones for glass carboys) at the LHBS which does the trick on what Oxy doesn't get out. My LHBS sells them for $23 for 3 gallon, $24 for 5 gallon, and $25 for 6 gallon.

Well, I went the el cheapo route and got the water crock spigots this morning
on E-Bay.

I like the compactness of the LBK, plus I have four of them and they come in handy when you
wanna try something different.
The spigot failure was the only gripe I ever had with them!

As noted, the BB 3 gallon carboys aren't all that expensive. I'm not crazy about cleaning them; I see no need for them to have all the ridges that they have, but I've bent up a bottle brush in a rough question-mark shape, and it works pretty well. You do what you gotta do. I tend to let them soak in a solution of Oxy-Clean for a while before doing a thorough cleaning, and it's not so bad.

I have a beer fermenting in a 3-gal Better Bottle right now - my first time using it. And it's my first fermentation not in an LBK. I LOVE the pr0n aspect, and now understand how watching airlock activity can be addictive.

As for cleaning, I obviously haven't gotten that far yet. But I've read that another good approach is to take a soft washcloth and put it inside the BB with a small amount of water and cleaner of choice, and then shake the BB so the cloth scrubs the inside surfaces.

I originally wanted a ported Better Bottle with their spigot and dry airlock, but they charge so much for those add-ons that they actually cost more than the fermenter, itself!

I love the one vessel bottling simplicity of a spigot. But they break, leak, harbor infection, attract bugs. That defeats the simplicity for me.