I must confess. I'm a very bad man. I actually bought something from Mr. Beer after staying away from them for many years.
Since my LBC exploded, I was short a fermenter. I'm afraid my other LBC will die soon too, it's just as old. I like the LBCs, but having used the "Mini Cooper" fermenter I picked up at a garage sale last year side by side for a while now, I really like the "Mini Cooper" better. The biggest issue was cost as they were only sold as part of a "kit with beer and bottles". But now you can buy them separately.
So I took advantage of Mr. Beer's 20% off sale to pick up a couple more of the "Mini Cooper" fermenters, because at that price point they were comparable in price to the LBCs. They call them 2 gallon, but you can do full 3 gallon batches in them with most common yeast strains, where the LBCs really max out at 2.6 gallons or you run into trouble. For me, it is better then a bucket as there are no sharp corners at the bottom, so less places for my brett or other bugs to hide, as the inside is completely smooth. You can see inside it although it's still UV resistant, unlike clear PET. It is dishwasher safe, so I can throw the collar part into my dishwasher and that takes care of the nastiest parts of clean up if I get beer stone type gunk, it just washes away. With the collar attached it actually has 4 gallons of volume before the lid (you can't fill it more then 3 gallons with liquid though), but because of this, a 2.5 gallon batch with 3787 or some other 33% headspace top cropping yeast, even if it goes crazy doesn't leak out. I've never had blowoff out of them by sticking to a batch size of 2.5 if I'm using a blowoff machine yeast like that. I've never had a 3 gallon batch leak either, even if krausen got up to the lid.
Even though it has 4 gallon total volume (3 gallons usable for wort), it's not any taller then the LBCs. I actually have less trouble (as in it's never happened) with trub blocking the spigot compared to my LBCs (where it will happen pretty much for sure anytime I use more then 2oz of hops commando), even though it's not a conical due to the concave bottom. The spigot is better, has a high flow rate, racking or bottling is quick. The design works great for my "semi open" fermenting, I simply don't use the lid clips, and just instead use a little band of loosely fitted tape where the clips would go to make sure it won't fly totally off and let it vent at will while it's rip roaring away. Then I'll use the clips once it settles down to keep the fruit flies out.
And they are constructed much more sturdily then LBCs, nice heavy/thick material that is not "squishy".
I'd have considered a big demon, but they are too big for what I do and my space requirements.
Buckets, I don't like the sharp corners at the bottom, and I don't like that I can't see in. I need to watch out for my Brett pellicles, and I don't want to MAKE one that wouldn't have happened by opening the lid a bunch of times to perve.
I waffled for a while trying to decide what to do, my other option was to take advantage of Northern Brewers "4 big mouth bubbler for $99" deal. Which by all means was probably for most people a better deal. But those are too tall for my space, and heavier, even the 5 gallon ones, and the opening is about the size of the LBC and I really like the wide bucket like opening of the "Mini Cooper", so much easier to clean up... sticking my arm all the way down that extra tall fermenter through the smaller hole didn't sound fun to me... And then of course I'd be giving my money to BMC.
I decided I'd rather give my money to Coopers...
Am I the
?
BTW, in case anyone wonders, you can get replacement spigots for the "Mini Cooper" or "Big Cooper" from the us.diy Coopers site. I don't know why Mr. Beer doesn't sell them. But they cost $4.95 if you need one, so it's not a bad deal, I might just buy a couple and sock them away.