i never liked no 6.5gal choice either..

Old copper wort chiller piece bent about 90 degrees blast away the crud ring with minimal issues for me.

I've been homebrewing about a year and started with buckets as that what the kit came with. This past summer I bought a 6 gallon PET carboy and have been using that ever since. I plan to add another as well as a 3 gallon Better Bottle for small batches.

For a sanitizer/cleaner I use OneStep. When I'm done packaging the beer I immediately clean the fermentor. I dump the yeast cake in the toilet then use hot water -maybe a gallon or so- put my hand over the hole and splash it around to remove the leftover grime, dump that in the toilet. Then repeat the process with OneStep, put a piece of aluminum foil around the opening and secure with tape or a rubber band, then store it sanitized.

I've never used a brush on the PET carboy or plastic buckets. With buckets I use a wash cloth to scrub clean. For the PET carboy, I just use hot water and cleaners.

I did get a rubber stopper stuck in my carboy and made some gouges in the neck of it drying to pry it out; I gave up and just left it in there as it doesn't impart flavor to the beer. When I sanitize the carboy, I make sure to let the sanitizer water sit in the neck of it for a minute or so to make sure it's clean as possible. It's been several batches like that and I've never had an infection once due to the gouges in the neck of the carboy. Due to this, I think infections from scratches in plastic buckets is grossly overstated.

BTW, the trick for that is to stuff a wet handkerchief or small cloth in the neck. Then tip the BB or carboy to settle the stopper on the cloth. When you pull out the cloth, the stopper will come with it. It helps if the inside is wet - especially with something like star san in it.


Mylo

Hmmm, I'll have to try that. Today is bottling day for my dunkelweizen that's in the carboy now. Thanks!

I've been leaving it in there and brewing dunkelweizens, naming the beer my Rubber Dunkel.

never had an issue with mine, probably have 6 or 7 of them.
I haul mine around in milk crates and never have a suck back issue.
Orange carboy caps work just fine and use them for when I need a blow off
I have one that I really abused just to see durbaility and the bottom outside is scratched but thats about it.
Glass is way to much of a pain in the ass IMHO
Even if I had to replace one BB every few years I wouldn't mind.
As for the 6 vs 6.5g, really does missing that little beer make that big of a deal?

And if it is a big deal, that's why they make fermcap.

just cracked mine this moring, no idea how I did it. It was soaking from last night and I dumped it and was rinsing and started leaking, and noticed a crack on the bottom. This BB was about 8 years old