Scavenging bottles and bottle boxes

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

jarrodaden

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 18, 2011
Messages
151
Reaction score
4
Location
houston
Anyone have any tips for picking up bottles or bottle boxes for free?

I am particularly interested in some of those real sturdy cardboard bottle boxes. I have only seen these at bars, but I am not sure if bars will give those away. Those boxes are sweet.
 
Personally, I recommend buying Sierra Nevada beers by the case or 12 pack. Drink the beer and you have bottles & a box for free. The labels are easy to remove with soaking and the size fits in the fridge where long necks won't.

On the plus side, the bottles are designed for bottle conditioning as Sierra Nevada bottle conditions their beer.
 
Beer/Liquor stores for good bottle boxes, just ask for them. If it's a store you frequent and they know you, tell them you're a hopmebrewer, bring them some beer on occasion, and they'll let you go into the back room and grab what you want. If you live in a retunable state, they may even let you pick through their bottles as well.

Heck, as I've posted in here, one of the stores I used to frequent before I moved this summer, I would walk in sometimes, and they'd say, "Hey beer x just came in, we were thinking about cracking one, wanna try it?"

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.
 
Last time I went into a bottle shop, they owner had probably 50+ boxes broken down and ready for recycling...I took about 10 off his hands, dabbed some glue in the corners and then a strip of Gorilla Tape on the bottom.

For bottles, just ask friends and family to save for you.
 
I occasionally dumpster dive at a local bar that has 1,000+ imported beers.

I now have quite the collection of unique belgium flip-tops, trippel bottles, German 500ml bottles and many other interesting shaped and sized bottles. I take them home and wash off the exterior with hose (trash cans can be very nasty), soak them to remove labels, rinse the inside, the santize and finally re-bottle.

Usually there are some good beer boxes laying around too.
 
But isn't the best part of accumulating bottles DRINKING the beer out of them? I had a lot of fun last winter/spring.

More seriously, I know a couple of people who work at liquor stores or bars. My neighbor is one. Free and easy.
 
Personally, I recommend buying Sierra Nevada beers by the case or 12 pack. Drink the beer and you have bottles & a box for free. The labels are easy to remove with soaking and the size fits in the fridge where long necks won't.

On the plus side, the bottles are designed for bottle conditioning as Sierra Nevada bottle conditions their beer.

SN is my favorite bottle by far .. and my friends know it :)
 
I have mostly sturdy 12pack boxes from us & My son. The leinenkugel's boxes are the only ones so far with separators,though. & they have tabs to keep them closed,too. So far,I have bottles from the US,Germany,Japan,& Scotland.
Boxes from Labatt's limited editions,Leinenkugel's,Magic Hat,Dundee's,& Great Lakes. Being cardboard rather than pasteboard makes them more stackable & long lasting.
 
The bar at the bowling alley where my league is always has them just waiting to be taken... 2 weeks ago I walked out with 2 cases of reusable bottles. the cleaning is the worst part about bar bottles though..
 
When I started brewing, I would take a six pack or two into work for our monthly meeting. I would hand them out afterwards. I did this for a couple of months and one month I had nothing to share. They asked me if I forgot. I told them I needed some "pry top" brown bottles to fill up because I was out. Now, I get bottles on demand. All I have to do is ask a couple of weeks in advance and I normally get two or three cases of empties.
 
I have mostly sturdy 12pack boxes from us & My son. The leinenkugel's boxes are the only ones so far with separators,though. & they have tabs to keep them closed,too. So far,I have bottles from the US,Germany,Japan,& Scotland.
Boxes from Labatt's limited editions,Leinenkugel's,Magic Hat,Dundee's,& Great Lakes. Being cardboard rather than pasteboard makes them more stackable & long lasting.

These are the type of boxes that I am talking about. The best box I have is an old one for Stroh's beer. I never liked their beer, but that is a great box.
 
At first, I started with the dumpster-diving in the alley behind the main restaurant strip - after a few trips of nasty gloves, stink, spillage, and ending up with a paltry amount of bottles (3/4 of which were clear Caronas), that sucked. Asking the restaurant/bar owners around here elicited a totally unexpected response - they nearly all were confused by the request and (this is the part I find baffling) WEREN'T SURE IF THEY WERE ALLOWED TO GIVE AWAY THEIR EMPTIES. Best I can figure, they are concerned about potential minors getting their hands on the bottles (although I'm in my 30's and balding). Also, none of the restaurant owners around here separate their bottles from their trash!!! WTF???? Although I did find an Irish pub that had some nifty bottles in their trash - Unibraus, various jeroboams, funky-shaped imports like Duvel, Golden Draak, etc.

After about a month of this (i.e. several 5-gallon batches of beer), I was driving our munchkin to school and noticed that the French-American club a few blocks from our house had their trash out - a large pile of big bags.....and a small WALL of beer cases. Lo and behold, they place empties back in cases to reduce mess inside! A couple had cigarette butts in the bottles, and of course most of the Caronas had stale lime wedges - all had the last dregs, but it was so nice to just open a case, swap the screwtops with the poptops from the next case and end up coming home with intact, dry beer cases with 6-pack dividers full of good poptop bottles! I may have to go through 18 cases to come home with 1 or 2 cases of good empties - but no gloves, no mess, no stick or trash, etc. I just wish the club members didn't like macroswill so much (although the Michelob Lite bottles were coming out in poptops for a couple of months....back to screwtops now though). It's a nice setup....twice a week (if I'm so motivated), I can stop by their pile on the way home from dropping off our son at school and spend 5-10minutes scanning the cases and usually end up with at least a couple of 6-packs-worth, sometimes as much as several cases. Of course, the brewlab has been running continuously for a year and a half now, so I'm needing to get new empties only when I give away cases as gifts. Plus, all of the Bud and Bud Light cases have been storing as stacking well in my cold room - and when a handle tears, I just grab a new case in the morning. I have so many boxes, SWMBO now has a wall of her knitting stockpile separated into cases on shelves and loves it.
 
look for a beer at local beer dist called Straubs...I think thats the name. It is a beer brewed with less sugar. great bottles, heavy, 16oz, and a kick a$$ heavy box. I get them in pa for $3.00 a case. They are the returnables that most places carry here.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top