16oz soda bottles

[dogma9]

my mr beer kit says i can use soda bottle to bottle my beer and i've been saving up and have 16 16.9 oz mt dew bottles for when my 2nd batch of mr beer gets done. most of my mr beer bottles are holding the 1st batch i made right now. Anything bad about doing this? like off flavors in my beer are my main concerns.

 

[jfr1111]

You mean like plastic bottles ? I don't think you'll have a problem unless you plan to age them. If you just wait for them to carb and drink them fast, they probably won't have time to turn flat. They are designed to hold pressure after all. I wouldn't reuse them over and over though, just to be on the safe side (you know, plastic and fear mongering...)

I have friends who bottled in this manner for camping trips. If they are clean and sanitized, why not ? Looks ghetto and feels ghetto, but once it's in a glass...

 

[dogma9]

yea, i figure they should hold carbination as good as the plastic mr beer bottles right?

 

[manoaction]

Do you ever drink commercial beer? Do your friends? Even if it does come out fine, saving empty glass bottles seems just as easy as saving mt dew.

I suppose it is all a matter of taste, but I don't think I could love my homebrew as much if it came from a old mt dew bottle.

 

[dogma9]

i'm fixing to start saving bottles, i bought a six pack of fat tire last night

but at the moment my mrbeer bottles are holding my first batch, and my 2nd batch is rdy to bottle in 2 days and all i have is my mtdew bottles i saved up LOL

i was just making sure mrbeer wasn't full of crap. my 6.5 gallon kit came with 48 glass bottles but their reserved for my 5 gallon batch i got brewing also.

but so yall know, i only drink rum mixed mtdew or koolaid. tried beer about 7 years ago and hated it. Overheard a guy at work talking about mrbeer kit and decided to look into homemade beer. So i ordered a mrbeer kit and bought some commercial beers to get my beer taste buds going. So far my cowboy lager from my mrbeer kit is the best i've tasted hehe with mgd the best commercial beer till i tried fat tire last night. It was pretty good. Sam adams i've tried octoberfest but the after taste was bit too strong, then i tried the regular sam adams and it was drinkable and got more drinkable the next night i finished the 6 pack off.

i messed up bad though, i'm off on vacation this week so i bought a 18 pack of miller genuine draft 64 i thought i was getting bottles to reuse till i found out u can't use twist off and to top it off i didn't realize these things don't have but 2.5% alcohol in them LOL i have to drink like 6 of them to feel like i drank one regular beer which is why i broke down last night and got some real beer

 

[FatherJack]

I use plastic beer bottles myself. I like the brown ones because they (hopefully) block the blue light that causes skunking.

Also, the nice thing about the plastic bottles is if they blow up you won't kill anyone!

But...that being said, I'm worried about how they will hold up over the long run. I can get Wychwood beers here, which have nice strong bottles. I may start hording those instead and just keep them in a box after bottling (in case they explode).

 

[Justibone]

After cleaning labels off of dozens (hundreds?) of wine and beer bottles, I'm done with that crap. I don't even mind bottling, but cleaning bottles is the absolute pain in my gluteus maximus. I'm sooooooo sick of bottles.

I bought bottles, bombers, but the problem with them is you have to drink two bottles at once, and you go through homebrew fast that way. From now on I'm buying bottles until such time as I get my keg setup.

But yes, you can use plastic soda bottles. The ones at the vending machine at my work are 20 oz., and I mainly use them as ice cubes for fermentation temperature control, but as long as the bottle didn't have root beer in it before (leaves a flavor) then you should be okay putting beer in it.

 

[bullinachinashop]

Your main problem with the pop bottles is that they are clear or green. Neither will block out harmful light. Make sure your keeping them in the dark until you refridgerate them.

Bull

 

[dogma9]

just out of sunlight?

 

[Justibone]

Also out of fluorescent.

High energy light beams can convert the alpha acids(?) from the hops to skunk the beer.

 

[dogma9]

okay, but regular light bulbs r okay? i'm gonna have them in my utilty room, and most of the time the light is off in their unless my wife leaves it on, so it random on how much/long that light is on

 

[johnnyspade]

I'm now intrigued about what rum and Mountain Dew tastes like.

 

[djinn88]

High energy light beams can convert the alpha acids(?) from the hops to skunk the beer.

Cool, I never knew the science behind skunk beer.

EDIT: Oh and Homebrew > Mtn Dew + Rum

 

[tarponteaser]

I have used both mountain dew and pepsi plastic bottles for bottling (24 oz). I do it for the convenience of having plastic when camping and being able to recycle the bottles away from home versus a desire to bring the bottles home ( normally use glass swing tops and they are a pain to haul back and forth). A good cleaning with oxiclean before sanitizing works great.

Regards

 

[FatherJack]

I have used both mountain dew and pepsi plastic bottles for bottling (24 oz). I do it for the convenience of having plastic when camping and being able to recycle the bottles away from home versus a desire to bring the bottles home ( normally use glass swing tops and they are a pain to haul back and forth). A good cleaning with oxiclean before sanitizing works great.

Regards

Booming from the grave, Billie Mays makes his next sales pitch:

"HOME BREWERS, DO YOU NEED TO CLEAN THOSE FILTHY SODA BOTTLES OUT? ARE YOU TIRED OF DOING IT THE OLD FASHION WAY AND HURTING YOUR BACK? TRY OXI CLEEEAAAN AND YOU'LL WONDER HOW YOU EVER LIVED WITHOUT IT!!"

<channeling/>

Sorry, couldnt resist.

 

[lumpher]

if you store the coke bottles out of the light, they are no problem. i use them for beer portability, and have for years. i bottle into them just like i would a pet bottle, and drink whenever. they're good for about 3 uses

 

[Justibone]

There is no "safe" light. Compact fluorescents are more and more common nowadays -- just put them in a box and don't worry about it.

 

[MikeRoBrew1]

I have a really good friend who lives across the country. Would I have any luck sending him a 2L plastic soda bottle in the mail? Assuming I do not charge and his state is legal to receive beer or wine in the mail (see list at http://wine.woot.com/).

I would be bottling from a keg and wrapping in newspaper, box filled with newspaper also. Also aware that the end user would have to consume within 24 hours of opening. I think you could make it to two days by compressing the plastic bottle and squeezing out the air before recapping. Maybe even a portable co2 device he could get?

 

[dogma9]

the thing about 2L bottles is after he opens it he has to drink it all pretty much that day or it will go flat so i was told. thats why i dropped down to the 16 oz size bottles.

 

[Justibone]

Those portable CO2 devices do exist, and if you want to you can force carb beer with them. Much easier to just let the yeast do it, IMO.

 

[MikeRoBrew1]

I was thinking more like if he drank half of the 2L bottle and wanted to re-carb the bottle. I dont think that would work though because of the air already in the bottle. MAYBE if he squeezed all the air out and then re-carbed the bottle until the bottle resumed normal shape (full of co2 instead of air).

If I did end up shipping bottles this way, I would likely add sugar. I am thinking I would not be bottling a whole keg though, just shipping one bottle every once and a while. I would put a small amount of sugar in the 2L bottle and then fill from the carbonated keg. Sounds okay?

 

[Justibone]

Shipping pressurized things may be not-so-good, I'm not sure. I guess all shipped beer is pressurized, so that's not the issue, but maybe I'm just nervous about you mailing your buddy a bottle bomb.