Broken bottle

[SaisonMan]

Hi, all. I ordered a couple cases of bottles recently, and when they arrived, there was one bottle missing. No big deal. Things happen. I just got finished washing the bottles and when I got ready to clean out the bucket I washed them in, I noticed some tiny shards of glass. Obviously, the missing bottle had broken and some loser, probably at Amazon, had tried to clean it up. I feel like I really cleaned and rinsed the bottles well. There were no shards of glass in the bucket I used to rinse them in. So my question is whether it’s safe to use them when I bottle tomorrow. I have no other bottles. I’m going to sanitize in the morning, meaning they’ll be shaken and rinsed one more time. Thoughts?

 

[Nate R]

I think you'll be just fine! Happy bottling!

 

[RM-MN]

Glass is way more dense than beer so even if a piece got left in a bottle you wouldn't be likely to drink it. You would pour your beer carefully anyway to leave any trub in the bottle and that is where the glass would stay, provided it didn't get rinsed away when you washed the bottles in the first place.

 

[hotbeer]

If you tell Amazon that a bottle was missing and only the shards of a bottle that someone removed was left in there, then they might send you a entire case of new bottles. Or something else like refund your entire purchase. Or they might not do anything.

But you won't know if you don't tell them. But be nice! Just the facts please.

If you washed them and sanitized them then you likely got every piece that's needed out of the bottles.

 

[SaisonMan]

If you tell Amazon that a bottle was missing and only the shards of a bottle that someone removed was left in there, then they might send you a entire case of new bottles. Or something else like refund your entire purchase. Or they might not do anything.

But you won't know if you don't tell them. But be nice! Just the facts please.

If you washed them and sanitized them then you likely got every piece that's needed out of the bottles.

I did and I got a refund, which was cool. I regret my earlier reference to a “loser” Amazon worker!

 

[Andrew J-Beer]

I always reclaim my bottles from purchases then tidy up and clean and sanitize for reuse. The only challenge is some breweries use decent glue that is not too hard to remove like Samuel Smiths while others like Maine Brewing Company use incredibly tenacious glue that is nearly impossible to remove. My beer selections have adjusted accordingly. Plus the 22 fluid ounce bottle releases were very common years ago and are now are incredibly scarce with few breweries doing (canning has gotten much more prevalent also) and are going the way of the Dodo bird as my local brew store owner likes to say or as I asked Sam the owner of Dogfish Head once when I saw him at a panel that releases in those bottles were no longer an he noted they were "uneconomical" though that might have been the new owners Sam Adams speaking- anyways I have found price of bottles that I do buy by the case from a brewery supply store have gotten quite expensive hence more likely to reclaim and reuse- I feel many of us as homebrewers are virtuous in this regard since our home brewery efforts are more environmentally efficient then mass produced and mass delivered brewery equation.