Ikea 1L Swing-tops

I was at Ikea a while back, and picked up four clear glass 1L swing-top bottles... They seem pretty sturdy. Has anyone used them for bottle conditioning before? I don't want to wind up with bombs...

Not sure about their sturdiness as far as bottle bombs goes (you should be all right), but my issue with some store-bought swing tops is the tops themselves. If the stopper is not made of ceramic, you will unlikely get a good seal. Most bottlers have moved to plastic stoppers because the ceramic stoppers could screw up the recycle machines.

One suggestion that has been mentioned in the past is to place ballons over your bottles after bottling to see if they inflate while conditioning. If they do indeed inflate, then you have a leaking swing top seal.

I have about 20 of them and use them for apfelwein. I've always used them for still apfelwein and used bombers to carb half the batch in. I've always wondered if they would hold pressure but hadn't had the gusto to throw some carb tabs into one to test it. I have a flawless bottle bomb record and I'm not about to break that with an experiment.

Cool, sounds like I should give them a try!

bensyverson said:

Cool, sounds like I should give them a try!

Click to expand...

There's really only one way to find out if it will work.