I think the answer is that as long as its pasteurized (anything likely at the grocery store) it’s fine. Now is it 85 degrees in the house? Maybe not. That’s part of the way a butter bell/crock works - the room temp water acts as a barrier for air NOT to get in.
I’ve had my butter bell for at least 3 years. Never had moldy butter or any question that it wasn’t edible.
I mean if you are going to have the same stick out for 3 months I might think twice!
Thank you! Plus, now I have something I can put on my Xmas list for my mom to get me (butter bell). 
As fast as my husband eats it and otherwise we use a tablespoonful here and there, that is never a problem, LOL.
There are SO many cute ones! Colorful too if you like color!
Ok so I had to google. What I see on Amazon is a product where the butter cup goes upside down and there is water at the bottom of the holder. Dumb question, is the water supposed to contact the butter?
(I’m wondering why one wouldn’t simply have a ceramic dish that has a normal plastic type of lid, or ceramic lid with some sort of gasket)
Yes, it is! That’s how butter was stored before the invention of refrigeration.
When you open the butter, is the surface a bit wet?
To store or not to store at RT?
From the article:
…a major sticking point for the L.A.-based “butter evangelist" whose own lab tests found no signs of spoilage after 30 days at temperatures up to 77 F.
I’m 66 years old, neither I nor my family have never refrigerated butter, no butter bell, no issues.
You will know immediately if butter is rancid, the same way you know if an egg is bad; you’ll smell it right away, but it seems that most of the posters here go through butter way faster than it would ever go bad.
Ditto here. Kept our butter out of the fridge because we’d eat half a stick to a stick a week. I’d keep it in the fridge when the weather was super hot (no AC here). We only started refrigerating our butter consistently when our consumption dropped.
We have a stick of butter on a kitchen counter at all times. It is housed in a basic clear-glass butter dish. I sprung the extra buck for the deluxe version with the “roof” piece, so our precious butter is entirely enclosed but visible, so we can easily keep tabs on current soft-and-ready supply.
We occasionally go a few weeks before finishing a stick – typically when our mac-and-cheese, toast, and mashed potato consumption is lacking – and I’ve never noticed any negative effects from eating weeks-on-the-shelf butter.
I leave butter in a plastic case on the counter unless it’s really hot in my kitchen–i.e., not this summer when it hardly ever got very hot outside. The cse has a magnet on top for the butter knife which came with the case. I am sure I bought it on Amazon after breaking too many glass dishes but I couldn’t find the exact one. Usually I buy what’s on sale, almost always salted, but I did buy the Costco Kirkwood butter once when it was on sale. I am not a baker. Love butter on good bread or bagel or bialy with sliced cocktail tomatoes sprinkled with a little MSG. Or anything sweet or savory. Or for frying eggs in the small cast-iron pan.
There is usually a water line on that bottom portion. So that’s where you fill the water to. If the top part where you store the butter is REALLY full it might barely graze the water- but I always push the butter into that part and condense it so that the butter is not extending over the lip of the top. Butter is sort of “waterproof” so it’s not like it’s wet.
There has been occasion where little bits of the butter fall into the water. That’s because you need to teach your household members to always press the butter into the top!
For some it might seem like a gadget but for others (us!) it’s a way of life.
My parents kept butter on the counter, but not until I was an adult. I’m not necessarily opposed. Thinking maybe a Christmas present for H, who uses a lot of butter. But, I’m not sold on the idea of packing it into the cup. I’m thinking more of a stick holder. I usually cut the half-pound slabs into normal size sticks and we keep it in a stainless steel butter container with cover in the fridge door. I’m not finding exactly what I have in mind on Amazon - need to think about this some more…
We mainly use the Land O Lakes butter in a tub that’s blended with olive oil, but I do like Kerrygold butter. Sadly, butter hasn’t been my friend since my emergency gallbladder surgery almost 50 years ago. I have to use it sparingly.
As a child, I ate butter on Ritz crackers which is something my grandmother loved. Back then I also loved the little baskets with different types of crackers and Melba toast served at restaurants with a dish of butter. My parents could have skipped ordering dinner for me and just let me enjoy those crackers.
Growing up my family lived in hot, humid places with no central A/C. Even after we had A/C in FL, butter was never left out. I didn’t know that people left out butter until visiting my future in-laws. H and I leave ours out in the cooler months, but not in the summer. Maybe it’s because we eat butter more often during the fall and winter and don’t worry about it going bad then.
Call me decor vain (I am) but while very functional I also prefer the look of a butter vessel like a butter bell/crock on the counter. I don’t want to SEE the butter (like in a clear case. Also I think the bell helps to keep the butter and vessel area more free of mess. No evidence of butter on the outside of the bell!
I am also decor vain, but I don’t want to see the butter vessel at all. It’s kept in a cupboard in our kitchen. (But I don’t keep much on the counter as you can see from my Home Improvement post. Even the toaster is in a cupboard.)
We leave it out, one stick at a time (1/4 lb. or 8 tablespoons, for anyone who doesn’t know how much a stick of butter is).
It gets used before it can go bad.
We always have stick and whipped unsalted Land O Lakes in the fridge. Except at Passover, where we treat ourselves to Breakstone whipped, which just tastes better on matzah, possibly because it’s kosher l’Pesach 
. I really feel that matzah is just a vehicle to transfer butter from the tub to my mouth.
I thought that’s what bread was for.