re using caps

Do you guys reuse your bottle caps? It seems like it would be hard to do after taking a bottle opener to them.

You can, but you have to mold them back into shape pretty precisely. They're cheap enough that I wouldn't bother.

That's not the place to try to save a few pennies. It's an invitation to infection and or oxidation and flat beer.

We've jabbered about this before. Bottom line is, if you're so broke that you need to pinch pennies by reusing bottle caps (and believe me, a few pennies will be all that you'll save), then perhaps you should be working a second job instead of brewing. Just sayin.

I am about to find out. By my stupidity I was short 6 caps when I bottled yesterday. I dug some out of the trash , cleaned, sanitized, and used them. I'll let everyone know how they worked after a couple of weeks.

At $3.00 for 300 caps I doubt it would be worth the effort.

just to add to this old thread, bottle caps aren't as cheap as that over here, for 300 bottle caps you would pay the equivalent in dollar of about $8, still relatively cheap though!

Without buying thousands of caps I've never seen them for $3 for 300 caps. Austin Homebrew sells 60 for $1.50 and 640 for $14. My LHBS is $3.00 for 100 for the cheapest caps. Still not enough of an expense to bother reusing them though for sure.

I use plastic 1L beer bottles from my LHBS, with plastic caps. Infinitely reuseable, makes bottling day nice to, since I generally only have to fill/cap 20-22 bottles instead of 50 something.

I can pop them off with a ligher or just about anything. They come off straight, not bent like they do with an operner. I have reused them on a few bottles simply because I ran a few short. I can't just go buy some here. I sure not going to do it to save 2¢ a bottle.

running out of caps is poor planning. if you are that close to running out wait til you get the caps before bottling. your beer will probably be better for it.

Bigniall666 said:

just to add to this old thread, bottle caps aren't as cheap as that over here, for 300 bottle caps you would pay the equivalent in dollar of about $8, still relatively cheap though!

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I pay about a 1.80 for 12 dozen, so it'd be a little over 4 bucks for 300...not worth not having my beer carb to save a few pennies.

akimbo78 said:

running out of caps is poor planning. if you are that close to running out wait til you get the caps before bottling. your beer will probably be better for it.

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Yes. I'll count them now and use my big bottles if I have to. I prefer 12 oz servings though. But then having to have another round of beers so I can finish bottling is not so bad.

Over here in Ireland if you go outside of dublin there are very few actual stores, if ye want to have a look at the crowd i order my gear from, pm me and i'll send the link, i don't know what the rules are about posting up links to homebrew stores in these forums.

but bottle caps should be the least of your worries, sure if you really wanted to, just splash out and get a crate of swing tops, they'll save money in the very long run and add convenience