A very silly question....

[Ballardinho]

I would love to hear anyone's ideas/methods you use to store your empty bottles while awaiting bottling day. Every time I finish a bottle, I rinse and set aside. They add up pretty quickly and, according to wife, take up too much room.

Do you rinse and stash in a bag? A box? Maybe an old beer case? I'm currently just setting in a plastic tub and know there is a better idea out there.

Again, silly subject, but thought I'd ask to see if anyone has a good idea!

Thanks!

 

[joyceman]

Im a fan of milk crates. You can usually get 23/24 in each and they stack nicely in the basement corner.

 

[flars]

I buy beer, for taste and the pry off bottles, that come in a cases with dividers. I also make dividers for Northern Brewers shipping boxes that are 12" x 12" x 12".
Rinse, dry, and store upside down in the case.

 

[eadavis80]

I just put them in old 12-pack boxes I bought when I first started saving bottles last summer when I was thinking of getting into this hobby. I have a good size storage room and have about 8 12-pack cases sitting in the corner ready to roll.

 

[stru]

I just use empty 12 and 24 pack boxes. Trust me, it still takes up tons of space. It doesn't help that I have separate stacks of boxes for regular, Belgian, lambic, and wine bottles.

 

[beernbourbon]

try this:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/better-bottle-crate-345447/

I am building a few of these for my bombers, but for the 12oz, I have a local 'bottle store' (one where I can get singles as well as six packs, etc) and they have told me what days they get deliveries, so I go that evening and they usually let me grab a couple of empty cardboard cases. I don't take ten at once, I've gone a few times, bought (quite) a few beers I've wanted to try, and asked if I could have a box or two. Over a couple months, I've managed to be able to 'case up' all my six packs that were floating around the basement, falling over, getting in the way, stacked on top of everything, in general lookin' like all hell. Of course, this then helped me when the boom came down and all my "beer $h!t" as it was referred to was so kindly requested to be removed to the confines of the garage.

 

[unionrdr]

I've been saving Leinenkugel's 12'r boxes,as they have separators. Saved up too many of those, so I started replacing them with case boxes. I have a box that I got a shipment from Midwest in that holds 26 bottles. I need to measure it, as it's smaller than case boxes. Then maybe print my brewery logo on label paper & voila! my own brewery boxes! They'd take up less space too.

 

[estricklin]

I bought a giant rubbermaid tote from Lowes, I filled it when star san, that is where they set until time to bottle. When it is time to bottle of coarse I do rinse and then sanaitize, because the star san in the tote has glue from the labels and stuff in it. I do change the sanitizer in the tote every 6 months or so.

 

[Gar]

I store mine on bottle trees. but your bigger problem is gonna be that your gonna have to sit down with the wife and talk to here and come to a agreement of a room thats yours. the garage is bullsh@t she will be wanting to put her car in there. the basement great if you have one or she will keep her crap out of it or leave it alone.

 

[william_shakes_beer]

Everybody has a process. Here's mine.

1. When I was a pup, I purchased beer in cases only. Saved the 6 pack racks and the boxes they came in. Now I have about 20 cases of empty bottles.

2. Take a 6 pack upstairs, place in the fridge

3. As I drink my malty goodness, I rinse out each bottle and place it upside down in the dishwasher to dry for 24-48 hours.

4. Return the bottles to the 6 pack rack in the fridge when dry

5. When the 6 pack rack is empty of fulls and full of empties, return it to the basement, in a case with flaps that keep it somewhat dust free. Exchange for a full rack, repeat liberally until brew day

4. The day before brew day, I run all the bottles through the dishwasher with no soap, on the sanitize setting.

5. On brew day, I use a vintator to squirt sanitizer into each bottle. Fill, cap, repeat.

I have 2 small pallets made by screwing 4 lengths of 2X3 together, each sized to fit 2 cases of beer side by side. Empty bottles go on the left pallet, full ones on the right.

 

[Hamaki]

Wow, I must be pretty lucky! Not many "your crap vs my crap" disputes in my house. About the only time the Mrs. lets me know (politely) that I need to do something is when I have taken up too much space in the fridge with yeast & hops. I don't have much room to spare in my little kegerator.

For the OP, I drink mostly Sierra Nevada and save the bottles and the 12 pk boxes for re-use. Bottles are rinsed immediately after pouring & placed in an empty SN box. Boxes full of empties go on a shelf in the basement. When bottling I rinse & sanitize the bottles prior to filling & store in the SN boxes on a shelf in the basement.

 

[JimRausch]

I'm pretty lucky to get at work Styrofoam-lined packing boxes that will hold 7, 6-pack carriers. After triple rinsing(or cleaning as necessary) my bottles, I store them upside down in the box until needed. Filled bottles go back in the box and stored for conditioning. And by the way, the basement is MINE- swmbo rarely goes down there, and I hope has no idea of how much camping equipment and brewing equipment I actually have.

 

[rekoob]

Same as most, rinse, dry, box they came in or milk crate.
I have 10 cases of .5 L bottles in the awesome plastic case they came in that I kept when living overseas. Add to that about 6 milk crates of empties and the 6 cases of empties in the box they came in that I just gave to a friend that started brewing this year and I have way to many bottles sitting around.
Oh, I also have 7 kegs.
Depending on where you keep your brewing stuff you have options to store bottles out of the way. I don't have a basement anymore so all my stuff is either in the garage or the brew shed. My bottles are on a shelf or two. I have a shelf just down from the rafters that the crates fit on and they stay out of the way.

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

I typically rinse mine out immediately after pouring, then hit it with a little hydrogen peroxide (to break up the yeast cake if there's any still in there. probably overkill but it works well especially for ones that I forgot to rinse ) and then it goes to the "brew room"
When I have enough I'll dump out the peroxide, rinse, and put them upside down in a milk crate with old (but clean) rags to absorb the water. When the next batch is ready to go in the crate (few days to a week), the old ones go into whatever box I have for storage.
Happily, I work in an office and the boxes that printer paper comes in work pretty well for bottle storage.