Bottle Fatigue

Does anyone have any comments concerning the number of times a standard amber bottle can be reused before it becomes fatigued and weakens?

I ask because when I started brewing about a year ago, it was a mad dash to drink and collect as many pop off bottles as I could. I was able to get about 8 cases of them and have since stopped collecting. I would estimate that each bottle has been refilled about 3 or 4 times so far.

I'm kind of curious about that, too. I was reading this Wikipedia page on Beer Bottles:

The ISB longnecks have a uniform capacity, height, weight and diameter and can be reused on average 16 times.

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Now, I'm sure that we handle our bottles a lot more gingerly than commercial bottling lines and I'm not sure what additional stresses they're accounting for.

I personally don't worry about tracking how many times a bottle has been used for homebrew.

Unless it's damaged in some way (crack or chip) it should be able to be reused an infinite number of times.

I have used mine over 10+ times. never had an issue. so I am with bja, as long as there is no "defects" you should be ok!

bja said:

Unless it's damaged in some way (crack or chip) it should be able to be reused an infinite number of times.

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+1

Rich

Thanks guys. And thanks for posting that quote EvilGnome. I read that same article on Wiki but must have breezed right past that sentence. It helps when another brain takes a look and see's something mine missed.

I absolutely have used the same bottles 16 times without problem.

What type of failure is expected after 16 uses? I don't trust that number. I'm going with infinity+1 until I know better..

passedpawn said:

I absolutely have used the same bottles 16 times without problem.

What type of failure is expected after 16 uses? I don't trust that number. I'm going with infinity+1 until I know better..

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Like I said, that number probably applies to the stresses of commercial bottling lines, long transportation, commercial cleaning and sanitation. All those processes are probably far more stressful to the bottles than our homebrew equivalents.

EvilGnome6 said:

Like I said, that number probably applies to the stresses of commercial bottling lines, long transportation, commercial cleaning and sanitation. All those processes are probably far more stressful to the bottles than our homebrew equivalents.

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I'm betting that's just an arbitrary number someone pulled out of there a$$.