Mexican Coke Bottles

Fellow brewers!

I have two cases of empty Mexican Coke bottles graciously donated to me by a friend. I also have two gallons of experimental ginger beer ready to be bottled up.

As long as I'm not worried about light-strike (there's no hops in this brew) am I good to use the Coke bottles? I'm assuming they'll hold pressure, but I'm not sure how carbonation pressures for soda compare to beers so I figured I'd check with the hive mind first.

Thanks!

I've never used them, but Coke is pretty highly carbonated. I would think they should be fine.

Keep them out of the Sun and all should be good.

I've used them before and had no problem with them. You do want to be careful about them getting sunstruck, though.

+1 on keeping them out of the sun, unless you're really keen on cloning a skunk beer like Corona.

They should work fine. You may want to turn the bottle 90 degrees and do a second crimp of the cap if it doesn't seem to be sitting the same way as it does on a typical longneck beer bottle.

Thanks for all the replies, looks like I'm good to go. But like I mentioned, there's no worry about lightstrike/skunking. This brew is literally ginger, brown sugar, yeast & water. Nothing to skunk.

Every batch I've brewed I fill one clear glass coke bottle with the brew. This way I can see the color, sediment, etc... I keep them in the kegerator (home made with a mini fridge) all the way in the back to minimize the exposure to sunlight. You will be fine with them holding the pressure!

Now here's the weird part. I save those brews (bottled in the clear bottle) to enjoy later on to see if the beer ages well with time. Maybe I'm wasting a bottle of brew by doing this but I don't know. But I feel there were some Mr Beer kits I made about two years ago that seemed to taste beer after it was bottled and chilled for several months.

I have a milk crate full of old Coke bottles, and I'm thinking about doing the exact same thing with a lacto ginger beer. Best of luck!

burninator said:

I have a milk crate full of old Coke bottles, and I'm thinking about doing the exact same thing with a lacto ginger beer. Best of luck!

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That sounds awesome. Recipe please!

I love using the mexican coke bottles, they cap very well with a bench capper (never owned a wing capper), but yeah, I would trust them at higher pressures than most beer bottles.

I read somewhere here that someone considered bottling a stout in them and capping with red caps as a joke for a bachelor party, but I never heard exactly how that turned out.

BattleGoat said:

That sounds awesome. Recipe please!

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I basically use Sandor Katz' recipe. 3-6 inches of ginger root, diced and boiled in a half gallon of water, with a cup and a quarter of sugar. I like to mix in some brown sugar or even molasses for color.

I normally use a ginger bug to ferment for a day and then bottle. This time around I followed the same schedule, but I used a home-grown lacto culture, instead of growing up a ginger bug.

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