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uncommonsense · 02-03-2011, 05:24 PM

How many time can you reuse bottles

**Revvy** · 02-03-2011, 05:25 PM

Until they break...

uncommonsense · 02-03-2011, 05:27 PM

Good there kinda spendy

**Hammy71** · 02-03-2011, 07:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by uncommonsense

Good there kinda spendy

????? Mine are free, it's the beer in them that cost me money.

wolverinebrewer · 02-03-2011, 08:11 PM

Quote:

????? Mine are free, it's the beer in them that cost me money

Or my friends money.

I've got collections going on all over the place.

uncommonsense · 02-04-2011, 03:29 AM

I've never use twist off. Can a you. A friend told me I couldn't. They would leak.

lumpher · 02-04-2011, 03:34 AM

bad idea to use twist-off's. the threads fracture, and co2 leaks out. pop-tops, use till they break. i recently gave away 100 i'd been using for years, and were still good

**jiggs_casey** · 02-04-2011, 04:10 AM

I'm approaching the 300+ mark. Some, I've had for 10 years...

I haven't broke any and the only ones I pitch are the ones I can't get the gunk out of after an overnight soak. It's glass, it doesn't really 'wear out'...

70Cuda383 · 02-04-2011, 02:01 PM

similar question, but slightly different. I'm not worried about the glass, I know what it can and can't do.

how about these flip top bottles? I brought a few cases back with me (full at the time

) from Germany when my unit was there a few years back. I kept them around with the intention of getting into home brewing. ...now 3 years later, I finally have my first batch going!

anyway, my concern was with the rubber gasket and the porcelain plugs. are these reusable, and suitable for carbonation? I know the beer in them before was carbonated, but do the breweries carbonate the beer in the bottle, or in a separate keg and then bottle them after they've carbonated?

basically...can I use these to bottle and carbonate my beer after the first fermentation, or are these types of bottles with the flip top lids only suitable for storage after the beer has carbonated itself?

if the flip top bottles are ok to use, are the rubber gaskets reusable, or one time only?

**Revvy** · 02-04-2011, 02:27 PM

If I purchase any bottles, they come with great beer in them. Any microbrew you can find, with few exceptions will be in capaable bottles, all you need to do is soak them in oxyclean and the labels will slip off.

Even some macro beers come in crown rather than twist off bottles. One of my favorite is Bud American Ale bottles, they have a unique shape, the beer is not as nasty as their other products and it's cheaper than most micros.

But there are plenty of options for homebrewers that don't cost anything.

It seems at first that accumulating bottles is difficult but if you mention around to people that you brew and need crown bottles they will start showing up. There's also craigslist, and freecycle.org, hooking up with other homebrewers, recycling centers. Asking at beerstores that have a good selection of beer for their returnables. Some stores will let you have their empties for the price of the deposit. And some bars will give you all you can haul out if you ask.

Also if you want to bottle in champagne bottles, go to a hall that does weddings, heck even a moose or vfw hall, you might just have to dumpster dive at worst, or just pick cases of empty asti bottles by the back door.

It seems daunting but you'll get plenty really fast. But in reality when you annouce you are homerbewing, they do come flying at you. I even had my building sooper years ago just use his key and leave me some on the dinning room table. He knew he'd get beer from me on a regular basis, especially if he was gonna do some work in my place.

As to flip tops, those work great, most Homebrewer's I know covet Grolsh bottles, even going so far as to maybe actually drinking that nasty stuff. You can get replacement gaskets for them when they start to wear out.....But you don't need to do that right away...Because if you are getting them "new" they've only been used once.