What to do with a ported better bottle

A few weeks ago I ordered a few better bottles from Austin HBS and I’ve just been pulling them out of the boxes as needed. So today while I’m working on a hefeweizen the mood stuck to use my last 5 gal better bottle and start some cider. After I had put a gallon of water and 2lbs of corn sugar on the stove to boil I went and pulled the carboy out of the box to sanitize. Surprise! My plain 5 gallon better bottle is actually a ported better bottle!

The box and the stickers were all marked appropriately for plain, so it looks like this was just a mix-up at the factory. However I’m kind of stuck as to what I should do. Right now I’ve got a carboy with a hole in the side and no ideas as to how to fix it. The racking equipment for it is the same price as just getting another bottle and I haven’t heard too many good things about that set up.

Anyone have any ideas?

yeah, send it back. It does you no good the way it is (you stated you don't want a ported carboy). give em a call. they should send you a new one and a call tag for the old. I would put up a stink if they want to charge you shipping.

go to your local hardware store and ask for some help to find a spicket for your high dollar bottle ,youl get it 3 times cheaper there ,than trying to buy it from online .

If you don't want it, call AHS and I'm sure that they'll send you the correct carboy at no charge to you.

I received some malt from them once that had a tear in the bag, resulting in some of the grains being spilled during shipping. I called them about it and within an hour I received a notification that the replacement malt was on the way.

Actually, there are a few of us around here who like the ported bottles.....I've heard it's really convenient to just rack from the spigot. You could probably do the same thing with a bucket/spigot setup, for a whole lot cheaper. I don't know where the Better Bottle company gets off charging so much for the accessories, such as the PET stopper and Hi-flow valve, though....

Give AHS a call, I'm certain they'll replace the bottle for you quickly. If the stickers were swapped as you said it's not their fault but they will certainly swap it out for you so you actually get what you ordered.

If you head to a local home brew supplier you can get the spiggot for it, but don't attempt to patch it yourself.

Just to follow up, I finally got around to emailing AHS last night (around midnight) and when I woke up this morning (8am) I had a notice that my replacement bottle had been shipped! AHS will definitely be getting tons of repeat business form me!

I bought one of those things and I like the convenience of just craming on the line and opening the spigot instead of siphoning. I was going to use it as a primary but now I find myself using it for faster fermenting beers and am thinking about getting another one.

Yeah, the price is double the cost of the bottle - what got me was when I bought mine I paid for the entire system and it wasn't put together like in the picture. I immediately became irritated as to how I was going to get my arm down into the bottle to screw the thing together until I figured out to use a piece of string. My wife enjoyed watching that.