Yet another reason to start kegging

My current HB supply is beginning to dwindle, so over the weekend I stopped by the liquor store for a sixer of some tasty new brew to enjoy with the fantastic weather we had here in Mpls. Of course, I need to stock up on pry-off bottles, as well. Being a non-kegger, I make it a point to never buy beer with twist off caps.

I finally decide on a Boulevard Wheat six-pack, packaged in their cursed little six pack box, which prevented me from getting a good look at the bottle caps. I get home and drop an F bomb when I realize that they are twist offs.

I am enjoying the last of them as I type, and it is freaking delicious! It kind of gets me thinking, what other fantasic beers am I missing out on because of my enslavement to pry-offs? It's gotta be damn near half of the great μ-brews out there!

Are any other of you non-keggers battling this problem?

I did...till I started kegging

I get some strange looks at the store when I'm pulling bottles out of the carton to inspect....the bottle cap.

I'm sure I've done the same and passed by otherwise good beer to get my bottle collection up. I never thought I'd see empty bottles as such a valuable commodity.

While my friends and I had a pretty astonishing collection of the right kind of bottles when we recently got started on this, I do find that I'm selecting "homebrewer friendly" micro-brews lately.

That said, I'm also trying to increase my collection of the 750ml bottles used by Dogfish Head. While this might seem like a chore to some I'm managing to enjoy it!

One of my brewing buddies had the foresight to collect about 2 cases of 11oz swing tops (brand escapes me) which he carried around with him for over a decade knowing that he would eventually brew! Talk about foresight!

I wish there were more brews in 22oz bombers.

I remember when Anchor's bottles were not screwtops. I think I collected a good number of them, but I can't remember why I didn't use them. Was it because the butterfly capper wouldn't grab the neck? Maybe it was just because I never had enough.

We should start lobbying Anchor and Sierra Nevada to put beers in homebrew friendly bottles!

yep I do the same thing even though I keg now I only have one tap running and bottle everything else. So bottles are still at a premium. It just doesn't seem logical to buy one beer when you can't reuse the bottles rather than the one you can. Obviously if I don't like the beers with pop tops in the store at all I'll go against my rule, but when I'm looking at two brews to buy and I"m on the fence I go wtih the poptops almost every time. Sierra Nevada is the brew I sometimes would rather have but steer away from b/c they are twistoffs. I agree with moonpie they should start using prytops. They are so hard to twist you need an opener half the time anyway.

I will be kegging this summer...until then, I only buy non twist bottles..which kind of sucks because there are a couple beers I want to try that are twist offs


Dan

joshpooh said:

They are so hard to twist you need an opener half the time anyway.

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I hear that!! I can think of a couple times when I woke up from a long night of several SNPA's with bloody gouges in my hands.

last time i bought beer not this week but last lol, i bought a 12 pack of blue moon thinking it was pry off, as soon as i noticed they where twist off i was pissed! i started cussing etc lol my wife was like whats wrong with um?! i wasl like they are TWIST OFF! ARGHHH i drank um anyways lol

I guess I am lucky.. in VT we have 5 cent deposit.. so i just take the twist offs to redemption.. where you can buy bottles back from them for 7cents apiece.. so either i get 5 bottles for every 7 I return.. or if in the right mood I can sometimes get them to trade straight up (esp if one of the bottles I am tradeing is still full of my hard cider)

SpamDog

I still find myself inspecting bottles at the store and saving bottles at home, even though I keg almost exclusively. I've found that bottled homebrew makes a great gift, so I usually wind up using the Beer Gun to fill a few bottles from each batch.

I've made it my own personal mission to accumulate, drink enough pry off bottles that when I run across the occasional pack of twist-offs, I can still enjoy the beer. I like alot of the stuff by Sierra Nevada, and the local stuff from the Kona brewery is twist off as well.

I definately want to keg though, so I am not slaved to filing up 48-50 bottles from every batch. I plan on bottling a 12 pack or so from every batch just to keep a good stock of bottles on hand.

If the bottles are sturdy enough, you can still cap twist offs with no ill effect. I have used twist off bottles in the past when I had no other option and never had one that didn't hold pressure (my swing tops on the other hand...).

GoBrewers said:

My current HB supply is beginning to dwindle, so over the weekend I stopped by the liquor store for a sixer of some tasty new brew to enjoy with the fantastic weather we had here in Mpls. Of course, I need to stock up on pry-off bottles, as well. Being a non-kegger, I make it a point to never buy beer with twist off caps.

I finally decide on a Boulevard Wheat six-pack, packaged in their cursed little six pack box, which prevented me from getting a good look at the bottle caps. I get home and drop an F bomb when I realize that they are twist offs.

I am enjoying the last of them as I type, and it is freaking delicious! It kind of gets me thinking, what other fantasic beers am I missing out on because of my enslavement to pry-offs? It's gotta be damn near half of the great μ-brews out there!

Are any other of you non-keggers battling this problem?

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Nope, I get all the brews and use their bottle. Hell I even have some bud and miller bottles around. Twist offs work fine despite what the people here say. In fact I think 90% of my bottles are twist offs.

I just bottled an IPA a few days ago... all in twist tops.

No more home brews left for drinking ATM, sadly... so i went to the bottle-o and got a case of longnekcs... twist tops again...

Do bench cappers really cap twist tops better than those butterfly cappers?

Oh I hear ya.... I love boulevard's brews but I haven't bought any since I got started in this hobby. You gotta build up the bottle collection somehow but, who wants to buy a case of empty bottles? I sure don't....

Oh I hear ya.... I love boulevard's brews but I haven't bought any since I got started in this hobby. You gotta build up the bottle collection somehow but, who wants to buy a case of empty bottles? I sure don't....

Wow!!! Am I drunk or did my computer seriously go outta whack there?!? Weird...

Moonpile said:

We should start lobbying Anchor and Sierra Nevada to put beers in homebrew friendly bottles!

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Sierra Nevada is about to switch over. Check it out: http://www.sierranevada.com/index2.asp

They're claiming fresher beer. I'd like to think that as a former homebrewer, maybe his conscience got the best of him.

kvh

I got really *steamed*, so to speak, when I bought a sixer of Anchor Steam and the bottles were twist-top. Those bottles are S-E-X-X-Y.

I never had a problem with twistoffs. I used a bench capper and twistoffs for a long time with NO problems. Thus I could drink any beer I wished.

I take this one step further and consider how easy the labels are to remove or not.

Weyerbacher uses stickers which don't come off without alot of elbow grease. Foil and metallic labels also are problems but not as much.