Bottle Thickness Question

Today is bottling day! I am in the process of santizing everything and ensuring the bottles are ready to go. I have had a couple of cases of bottles for a while, but I have recently been saving my Sam Adams bottles to add to my inventory. While cleaning them today I noticed that they felt uncommonly light. Obviously they are brown and do not have the twist off tops, so I though they would be great for bottling. My old inventory even has some SA bottles that are a few years old, but they feel thicker. I take it that SA made their glass thinner for cost savings. What I am wondering is how thin can I go when it comes to bottling? Most of my thicker bottles are about 8-8.5 ounces empty. The SA bottles are 6 ounces.

Thanks to everyone for their responses to my other questions in the past couple of weeks. This website has been a great help!

I haven't been brewing long but for most of the batches I've made I've used SA bottles and Bass Ale bottles and I haven't had any problems at all. It is my understanding that you have to just make sure to never use twist off bottles as the tops of those are too delicate. I'm sure some people might use them and have no problems but everything I've read says to stay away from them.

Good luck!

I've got an empty Sam Adams Boston Lager bottle sitting right here on my desk. It feels thicker and heavier than the empty bottles I bought from the local home brew shop. I wouldn't worry.

I bottled up some IPA in Sam Bottles last week too...

Sounds good to me! Thanks for the reassurance. Cheers!

I use a dumpster assortment of bottles. All 12 oz, but some weight double what others do. All OK.

I just now finished bottling a batch, in mixed bottles. I thought my bench tapper was broken for a second- the Arrogant Bastard Ale bottles must be a bit larger in diameter, it really took a lot of force to crimp the caps. Worked fine though.

Last batch I crushed one bottle. Not a ABA. Cracked maybe ? It was one I'd used s couple times...

Used to be that the thought was not to use recycled bottles. That is, bottles used first be a beer manufacturer, not recycled bottles that you got from brew stores and recycled them. Not at all sure why that was the thought outside of that of the thickness... was that the only reason? Is the general census that you can use recycled bottles nowdays?

casebrew said:

I use a dumpster assortment of bottles. All 12 oz, but some weight double what others do. All OK.

I just now finished bottling a batch, in mixed bottles. I thought my bench tapper was broken for a second- the Arrogant Bastard Ale bottles must be a bit larger in diameter, it really took a lot of force to crimp the caps. Worked fine though.

Last batch I crushed one bottle. Not a ABA. Cracked maybe ? It was one I'd used s couple times...

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Speaking of Arrogant Bastard Ale... That's one of my favorite beers! Unfortunately, I can't find it anywhere here in NE Florida. I would like to make my next batch an ABA clone. Do you have any recipes?