Better bottle question....

I called my LHBS to get a Better Bottle ordered (they dont keep them on hand). The guy came back on the phone and stated something along the lines of "you need special accessories for this bottle, would you like those too?" I kindly declined assuming he meant a carboy cap or a stopper? Does better bottle require exclusive better bottle accessories or is it like any other carboy?

My Better Bottle works just like any of my glass carboys except the opening is much bigger, I'd guess about 2", so you'll need a new bung if you don't have one but that's it.

There are different accessories you can get for the BB, racking adapters etc, but basically you just need a different bung as mentioned before.

Ed worts apfelwein recipe thread mentions using the standard orange carboy cap with better bottle. I have these. Is that not sufficient vs the use of a bung?

It may be important to find out if he is ordering you a better bottle that is ported or not. If he is ordering a ported one for you, then there will be a hole near the bottom that need plugging.

I have one plastic carboy. Not Better Bottle brand, but nonetheless, it uses a #10 stopper, while all of my glass ones use a #6.5. It is my understanding that Better Bottles have a larger opening at the top as well.

the carboy cap fits fine. make sure he isn't ordering you a ported one as mentioned above.

Make sure you don't use a carboy brush on it as that will scratch the inside. If you have some gunk oxy or pbw won't get off just partially fill and insert a soft cloth and swish it around.

I use the orange carboy cap with 1/2" ID vinyl tubing for blow off tube on my non-ported 6 gallon BB and it works great. Cleaning is a snap...fill with water and oxyclean ( or PBW ) and let soak. Empty after a day ( or month ) and rinse well. Clean as a whistle ( never understood that one...wouldn't a whistle have a ton of spit in it ).

Every lhbs will sell a variety of drilled stoppers, one of which will fit better bottles (good online shops like northern brewer or B3 will tell you which in the product description).

The orange carboy caps fit, but loosely. I bought like 10 of those once online and half of them fit fine and have too loose for my taste. I threw those away. Now I always buy carboy caps at the LHBS and I pick out the ones that look the smallest.

The red carboy caps fit too, VERY tightly. I use those (and there I pick out the largest ones and get them hot before I put them on) for pressure transfers as I had too much trouble with the orange ones popping off at less than 3 psi.