Champagne bottles

My first batch is almost finished fermenting and I was wondering if I Can bottle and condition in an empty champagne bottle or should I consider other means

I presume you are referring to a batch of beer that is fermenting. The easiest way to bottle them is to save commercial beer bottles, the pop top variety, not the twist offs, and buy bottling caps and a hand capping tool. You'll need to wash the bottles and sanitize them using Iodophor or Star San. Sanitize your bottle caps too.

Bottle caps usually come in bags of 144 at your LHBS. A two-handed manual capper is maybe $15.

But to answer your question, yes. You can bottle in champagne bottles. Standard bottle caps fit most champagne bottles.

Thanks much appreciated

You're welcome. One more thing. Regular bottle caps are 26mm and fit American champagne bottles. If you have European champagne bottles, you'll need 29mm caps and a bell crimper for your capper made for the larger caps. Or a floor capper.

Here is a site (one of many) that sells the 29mm caps and bell crimper. Annapolis Home Brew

Here is one of many good threads about this: Champagne bottles 29mm crown caps


And --- welcome to the forum.

I've bottled cider in champagne bottles, and yes, you can use them. My LHBS sells reusable plastic corks and wire cages you can use to seal them--without a capper. It takes a bit longer than pop-tops (i.e. Grolsch bottles) or a proper capping system (since you're twisting the wires by hand) but it gives the beer a nice swanky touch, if you're into that sort of thing.

I bottle in American sparkling wine bottles. They're great, as are 22 ozs.

Thanks I think I'm gonna go with regular beer bottles, I think that would be the best bet

Hatchbrew that sounds great I was wanting a bigger bottle, will regular caps work with those bottles

I just bottled two champagne bottles using the platic corks and wire cages. Really simple and I think 12 & 12 cost me $3.25? The plastic corks are reusable, and so are the wire cages to a certain extent. Sure it doesn't look as nice as real cork, but no corker required. I'm hoping they are not too hard to remove.

I would like to build up enough champagne bottles to package 2 this way for all of my bigger Belgian brews. And then age them for 2 or 3 years.