Plastic Big Mouth Bubbler Sealing Problems

How does the spigot fix the leaky lid problem?

Gonzo_Don said:

After fighting with Big Mouth Bubbler and their incredibly shoddy customer service, return policies, quality control, and inability to design a functional plastic carboy, I have solved the problem of the non-sealing cap.
1. Drill a 1" hole in the thing about 1" from the bottom.
2. Get yourself some silicone aquarium sealant from Home Depot or Lowe's and an Italian spigot from Amazon.
3. Stick the spigot in the bubbler and tighten it up with a pipe wrench.
4. Smear silicone around the inside and outside of the spigot's entry hole.
5. Use the thing strictly for hard cider - when you put the piece of junk lid on, give it a tight wrap with 1" electrical tape and screw the blue piece of junk down onto the piece of junk bubbler.
6. Mine held a good enough seal for 2 weeks and by then it was time to bottle the cider.
DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, USE THIS PIECE OF JUNK FOR ANYTHING ELSE AND IF YOU HAVEN'T PURCHASED ONE, DON'T.

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I was being a little facetious.
The electrician's tape fixes the leaky lid problem, but it'll only hold for long enough to get a batch of cider through a 10-14 day ferment. I would never, in a million years, use this thing for a secondary ferment of wine because it leaks like a sieve.
I've found that it's best for cider (and not really great--but better than throwing it away).
5 gallons of apple juice, 2 cans of apple juice concentrate, 1 packet of champagne yeast.
2 weeks later, add another can of apple juice concentrate, put it up on a counter, and use the spigot to bottle into plastic one liter soda bottles with screw caps instead of an auto-siphon. Feel the bottles every few days until they're hard as rocks and then cold-crash in the fridge. Perfect cider every time... so far.

We just started our 2nd batch in our new glass 6.5 gallon big mouth with a visibly rolling primary with no airlock bubbles. Seems the gasket is bunching up and not sealing well. I will call the company soon.

Best of luck to you, Steve. When I called them they pretty much laughed at me and told me I didn't know what I was doing. I wish there were some way to give folks a warning in this forum right up front and put these people out of business once and for all.

The lid problem may be finally solved (in my opinion). Even after having a huge blow-off the lid remained in place probably because I let the StarSan on the surfaces drip dry for awhile so they weren't so slippery / soapy.

BUT, I finally remembered the other reason why I hated this fermenter . . .

There are too many ridges, ledges, and dimples that line the inside wall of the fermenter that allow yeast to settle on.

I had a perfectly cold-crashed crystal clear SuperCharger APA that was ready to bottle, and when I gently moved it from the refrigerator to the work bench all of that yeast on the sidewalls got disturbed and turned the beer cloudy again.

I decided to rack the beer out of this piece of sh-t fermenter and transfer it into a BetterBottle secondary.

I sincerely trust that out of the 4 rings of silicone on the new lid design that at least 3 of them are forming a tight seal (as self evident from the airlock activity even after a week), but this fermenter is now assigned to the duty of "primary only" for my wines.

Cheers

I just bought the big mouth bubbler it has the new lid and it will not stay on. I have a ratchet strap holding it on now. I want to get a screw down lid so I can combine it with the new universal lid. Does anyone know where I can buy one?

Did you get the glass or plastic big mouth? I have two of the plastic ones and the new lids work great for me (I had issues with the old style).

The blue ring that screws on for the old style lid won't work with the new lids; the new lid has a lip so the blue ring doesn't fit over it. At least on the plastic BMB.

Your new lid has the silicone seal with the ridges, doesn't it? Mine fit very tight. I assume the silicone seal can turn inside out; make sure the ridges are on the outside of the lid.

If you still have issues beyond that, I'd contact whoever you bought it from, because you may have a defective lid or bubbler.

My experience with the new lids is that they will blow off if you have a full-er-ish carboy and/or are running a high grav beer. I put my new lids on a belt sander and trimmed them down to fit inside the rings that came with the original lids. If you look earlier on this thread or another just like it there are instructions. Or contact Northern Brewer, they will tell you how to do it (their cust service guy is the bomb). If you are running middle gravity or lower you shouldn't have any problems.

Oh I almost forgot: if you put the new lids on wet from starsan, they will push out. You need to sanitize in enough time to let them dry then they will be pretty tight.

Good luck and Sláinte!

Just got a bmb with the new lid. It pops out by itself with little to no pressure. When I purchase something I don't expect to have to modify it to work properly. I will not be purchasing a second.

Got the 6.5 gallon BMB with the original screw-on lid off of Craigslist. Similar to what others say, primary is not a huge concern but secondary or cold crashing you need a good seal. After reading this and the thread by passedpawn what worked for me was three layers of sanitized saran wrap under the white lid disc and two stacked rings of cardboard (gaskets, if you will) between the blue ring lid and the white disc. Now I can screw the blue ring down medium tight and not have to fight with it to unscrew. And lots of activity from the blow-off tube. But troubleshooting this took hours of my life that could be better spent brewing tasty beer. So I'm an unhappy second owner.
Seriously, would it have killed them to make a gasket design? That's what Ball canning lids do, and it works great there.

I wish this thread would go away !

Don't buy a BMB. But if you did that's probably why you are here reading this.

Your time away from work to enjoy your hobby of brewing beer is priceless. Don't waste your time with all of the fixes and tricks to get this piece of crap to seal. Some of which I have contributed to.

If you can still return your order, then run, don't walk to return this POS.

I'm not saying throw it away if you can't return it . . . The new and improved lid (with the tapered silicone ridges) is better than the original lid design, and this fermenter works great for the initial fermentation of wines and other fast fermenting batches.

But for beer it sucks. Don't waste your time and money.

Cheers & 17 !

I second BlackDog-Brewery's opinion. With some user modifications the thing is just "okay" for initial fermentation of wine, but that's it.
If you see me using a Big Mouth Bubbler, call the FBI because somebody's got a gun to my head.

This thing has extremely high profit margins because it's poorly made and a piece of crap. Feel horrible for people that fall into the marketing ploy of these things. I did it myself and ever since I now refuse to use the "large typical" homebrew supply options on the Internet.

BlackDog-Brewery said:

I wish this tread would go away !

Don't buy a BMB. But if you did that's probably why you are here reading this.

Your time away from work to enjoy your hobby of brewing beer is priceless. Don't waste your time with all of the fixes and tricks to get this piece of crap to seal. Some of which I have contributed to.

If you can still return your order, then run, don't walk to return this POS.

I'm not saying throw it away if you can't return it . . . It works great for the initial fermentation of wines and other fast fermenting batches. But for beer it sucks. Don't waste your time and money.

Cheers & 17 !

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Gonzo_Don said:

I second BlackDog-Brewery's opinion. With some user modifications the thing is just "okay" for initial fermentation of wine, but that's it.
If you see me using a Big Mouth Bubbler, call the FBI because somebody's got a gun to my head.

Click to expand...

bondra76 said:

This thing has extremely high profit margins because it's poorly made and a piece of crap. Feel horrible for people that fall into the marketing ploy of these things. I did it myself and ever since I now refuse to use the "large typical" homebrew supply options on the Internet.

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^^ regardless what they say, I love mine. I started with 2 glass carboys, then had 6 Better bottles, which I gave away in order to switch to these.

I did have to modify the lids to get them to seal properly, but that (literally) took me 20 minutes. It also cost me the additional (~$5) cost of the universal lid for each of them.

These things are a joy to use.