Bottling

Being limited on funds for my new hobby I am trying to collect bottles to sterilize and reuse. The problem I am facing is that the majority of beer is in twist top bottles. Is there cost effective equipment for home brewers to properly apply twist tops to bottles? Could someone please help me with this?

Some people cap on twist top. I don't want to take a chance so I go to the local recycle place with a long handled fishing net and scoop out the bottles that I want from the dumpster, take them home and soak them in Oxyclean to clean them up and remove the labels. I look a bit like a vagrant but what the hell, I have free bottles

My sister works at a sushi restaurant. She saves me all the empty bottles I need. (non twist off) I soak them, peel off the labels then store them. When it comes time to bottle I do a oxyclean soak for two hours, (with Oxyclean Free) bottle brush them and rinse. Then sanitize right before I bottle. Works great. Maybe you can talk to someone at a restaurant and trade them a bottle or two of your brew. I also use the 22oz bottles. Saves time and money.

That is a swell Idea. I will be contacting some local bar and restaurant employees.

Your local Mexican restaurant will have plenty of brown dos equis bottles that are pop off caps. The labels are pretty easy to clean as well.

Here they are just in a recycling tub outside the back door.

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 super 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.

60 bottles on the way. 48 12oz ambers, and 12 clear wire bottles.