Glass for rootbeer for old time's sake

hi, i'm a new member and although i have been brewing many alcoholic beverages for the last three or four years, i'm new to soda.

i want to make rootbeer to bring to my family christmas this year (we celebrate on new years) because my family used to make it when i was very little.

i know people say not to use glass, but i have the exact bottles we used to use and i think it would be great fun to see the looks on my brothers & sisters faces when they see the old bottles.

my questions are thus, first of all can anyone give me advice on ways to make an explosion less likely?

second, i remember putting the full bottles in the oven when i was a kid but don't see any mention of doing that in any of the things i have read recently. any ideas why my dad did this?

thanks so much

-åke larson

He probably put them in the oven to kill the yeast so the bottles didn't explode.

As you know, the live yeast will keep fermenting. That's what we recommend bottling in plastic soda bottles and sticking them in the fridge as soon as they are carbonated. I would guess that putting the glass bottles in the oven pasteurized the root beer and disabled the yeast.

I'm sure he knew what he was doing, but I don't think I'd take a chance. If you're inexperienced with this, you could be giving your family root beer grenades.

If you really, really, still want to do this, you could bottle some in plastic and some in those glass bottles. As soon as the plastic bottles feel firm, stick the glass bottles in the fridge ASAP. Keep them ice cold until you give them as gifts, then tell your family to keep them in the fridge also. Maybe give them all 1 glass bottle (as a token) and give them the rest in plastic. That would reduce the risk of bottle bombs.

Hej, yooperbrew,

thanks, that makes sense with the pasteurizing. I was planning on just bringing the rootbeer for the family to enjoy while we were together, not for them to bring it home. My family has a tendency to save "special" things, and I knew this was a time sensitive endeavor.

unfortunately I don't have any plastic bottles. I don't buy beverages in plastic, maybe I could find a friend with a bottle or two to do the pressure test.

I'm still kind of tempted to try the oven thing with a few bottles. I'm going to see if i can find any info anywhere. I wonder how many other old timers did the same thing? unfortunately they are probably not making their wisdom known on the web.

thanks again.

Not that I'm endorsing the method for soda bottles, but 20 minutes at 150F will kill yeast.

... finished bottles are heated to about 150 degrees F to pasteurize. This was done in a tunnel and took about 20 min to get through the tunnel. This process also weeded out weak bottles since they broke, often breaking other bottles around them.

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Kind of on the OP's subject, Would it be possible to force carb in a 2l bottle and then transfer to glass bottles, and then cap?

Wallygator said:

Kind of on the OP's subject, Would it be possible to force carb in a 2l bottle and then transfer to glass bottles, and then cap?

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Yes. I force carb (using a carbonator cap) often. The danger of the glass bottles comes when you use yeast to carbonate. The yeast eat the sugar, and don't quit just because you tell them it's enough. If you're not using yeast, then you're fine. The issue might be tons of foaming, though. For example, you have a 2L bottle of root beer. It's at 40 psi or so. To dispense that into bottles without any foam, you'd need like 30 feet of line. You can pour it into a glass to drink, of course.

It'd be much easier to force carb it in a keg, then use a counter pressure bottle filler and a very low dispensing pressure to keep the carb but reduce the foaming.

What about boiling the bottles(canning) or putting them in a pressure canner that way you would kill the yeast and if a bottle would explode at least its under water slowing down the glass shards, maybe?

The pressure of a gas is directly related to the temperature if the volume is constant. So if you have 30psi of pressure in a glass bottle at room temperature (20C) you will have 150psi at 100C in a boiling water bath.

I can't see any good coming of this. Please rethink your plans and hang onto your bodyparts.

Cheers

Well, if'n I were to do this, I'd fill 1 plastic bottle and use as a gauge. Surely you can find one plastic bottle for this!

I made root beer a while back and wasn't thinking and after a while they started exploding. These were HEAVY Coke bottles.

You could fill glass bottles up and let them sit for a few days where it's warm, and then move them into the fridge (using a plastic bottle to know when the carb level is right), but that is still a risky proposition. However, lots of people do it.

Homercidal said:

Well, if'n I were to do this, I'd fill 1 plastic bottle and use as a gauge. Surely you can find one plastic bottle for this!

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+1 to this. Break down and buy one coke or sprite in a plastic bottle and fill that at the same time you fill your glass bottles. When the plastic bottle is rock hard, refrigerate the whole batch. Pretty foolproof.