2 fermenters, one bubbles, one doesn't. Why?

Got 2 6 gallon fermenters full of apple-sugar-wine.

One is a glass carboy, one is a Better Bottle.

Both fermenters have steady streams of bubbles running up the inside of the bottles, and both are corked and have bubblers in place.

The glass carboy is bubbling along like a champ.

The Better Bottle isn't pushing anything through the bubbler at all.

Any idea why?

Fermentation is taking place, I can look at the bottle and see it. Also, the stopper has been re-seated twice.

The second one doesn't need to vent excess co2. Afterall that really is what an airlock is for. It's a valve to keep beer off your ceiling. If it's not bubbling, it doesn't really need to, it hasn't generate an excess amount of co2 to make it go blip. Or it is getting out elsewhere, like around the seal of the bung. But either way, as you can clearly see, airlock bubbling, though nice to watch is really irreverent to the brewing process. Some airlocks bubble, some don't. Some don't bubble for awhile, then start (but that doesn;t mean fermentation hadn't already started) some start and stop (and that doesn't mean that fermentation has ceased. Some bubble fast, some bubble slow....

It's just bubbles.....I have 9 different fermenters, and half of my beers I never notice airlock activity in them....and I've never not had a beer turn out just fine.

It also illustrates that there is nothing "typical" in brewing...every fermentation is different, and should not be used to compare one with another...you can't do that.

No two fermentations are ever exactly the same.

When we are dealing with living creatures, there is a wild card factor in play..Just like with other animals, including humans...No two behave the same.

You can split a batch in half put them in 2 identical carboys, and pitch equal amounts of yeast from the same starter...and have them act completely differently...for some reason on a subatomic level...think about it...yeasties are small...1 degree difference in temp to us, could be a 50 degree difference to them...one fermenter can be a couple degrees warmer because it's closer to a vent all the way across the room and the yeasties take off...

Someone, Grinder I think posted a pic once of 2 carboys touching each other, and one one of the carboys the krausen had formed only on the side that touched the other carboy...probably reacting to the heat of the first fermentation....but it was like symbiotic or something...

With living micro-organisms there is always a wildcard factor in play...and yet the yeast rarely lets us down. So it is best just to rdwhahb and trust that they know to what they are doing.

Yeasts are like teenagers, swmbos, and humans in general, they have their own individual way of doing things.

Good answer. Ta.

Turns out, the bubbler is an old one and doesn't fit in the stopper properly.

Got a spare though.

Sorted.