Bottling in 2litre coke bottles - release pressure?

Hey folks, bottled my first brew on friday, an EDME Dry Irish Stout, in 2L coke bottles (20p from supermarket - cheaper than empty ones, and designed to hold fizzy stuff). I left about 2 inches at the top of each bottle, and squeezed out the air before putting the tops on to get rid of any oxygen and give it some 'growing room' while it carbs. The bottles have since returned to their original shape and are starting to harden as i expected. Should I consider releasing a little pressure if they start to feel -too- gassy? (i.e. hard as a brick, or visible signs of strain)

nope, let them do their thing, they are designed to hold that kind of pressure, and unless you put to much sugar in or your beer was not done fermenting, you should not have problems.

Just trying to get my head around this.

how does this work with glass bottles, obviously it is nigh on impossible to remove the air in this instance, does the excess Co2 get absorbed into the beer and does the air in the bottle have a detrimental effect on the beer ?

If you get a carbonator cap (and you have a CO2 setup), you can force carb right in the bottle.

Burgo, good capping practice is to fill the bottle, and immediate place the cap on, leaving it loose. Continue filling/placing a bunch of bottles. In the mean time, some CO2 is coming out of the beer, displacing the air. Then crimp the caps one, in about the same order.

I filled eight 2 liter bottles from a keg Saturday. I'm giving the bulk of a strong red ale away as Christmas presents, and I need the keg for another batch.

I had the ale well carbed and chilled to about 38*. I just used a party tap and filled them slowly, at about 5psi. I got some foam, not too bad. I went along and topped them up as the foam settled. I got them about 85% full, then went along and gave them each a 30psi hit with the carbonator cap and stashed them in my kegerator until I get ready to give them away.

Ignoring the diversions to other subjects and returning to freelancer's question:

Unless you have done something horribly wrong; really disastrously, you'd have to be trying to do it wrong, wrong; you should have no issues with plastic soda bottles - they reliably hold 150 PSI (10 bar), which is (IIRC) about double what champagne carbs at (around room temperature), and champagne is considerably more carbonated than any style of beer I know of should be carbed to.

If they actually deform outwards, sure, you can vent them. In point of fact I've heard more tales of them spontaneously unscrewing than any other problem, so you might actually want to check that they are screwed tight and stay that way. Keep them in the dark, of course.

I carb in 2 liter bottle all the time. I use the same method described earlier. I give them to my budies and then they tell me how great I am for giving them free beer.

Thanks folks, much appreciated. They'll have had 3 weeks in bottles on xmas day so while i'm not expecting it to be fantastic by then, I'll hopefully have something drinkable

I am scared. I do like to learn though. Education through fear. Kinda like Oxford.

Wondering what cap choices for using the 2 liter bottles? Can you reuse the ones they come with?

update: (kinda late, sorry for digging up old thread.)
worked fine, used similar bottles on my next batch with no issues on either.

Accoustiknoyz said:

Can you reuse the ones they come with?

Click to expand...

yup. sterilised them with the siphon tube on bottle day.

Yeah, you can either reuse the caps they come with or buy some tamper-evident caps from most any LHBS or online. For personal use, I just reuse the caps. For gifts, I buy new caps (or bottle in glass).