Brands with Pry-off bottles

[snailsongs]

I felt like an ass the other day when I decided to put back a 4-pack of good looking pub-brown ale from Sprecher just because the bottles were twist off....My grocery store limits me enough without me limiting myself to pry offs.....damn! I'd be left only with three good brewery's to choose from (SN, New Glarus, Capital Brewery).....BTW, is Sprecher beer any good?

 

[flyangler18]

I've always wondered what the reasoning is behind this. Why, exactly, can you only buy beer this way in PA?

I'm not really sure of the reasoning behind it, but it certainly makes tasting different beers extremely cost-prohibitive. Very occasionally, you might find a speciality grocery or gourmet store that has the license to sell six-packs or singles, but it's spendy and quite rare. I just drive into Maryland (less than 10 miles from my front door), although I've not bought a single commercial beer in over two months given my homebrew stockpile.

The laws are definitely archaic and a general PITA.

 

[Pogo]

Beck's bottles require a different size cap, as well as a different sized bell for the capper.

I think that it is the same as those used on the champagne bottles that will accept crown caps.

I'm thinking that this size difference may apply to some of the other imported green beer bottles as well.

Pogo

 

[SumnerH]

I'm not really sure of the reasoning behind it, but it certainly makes tasting different beers extremely cost-prohibitive. Very occasionally, you might find a speciality grocery or gourmet store that has the license to sell six-packs or singles

Those places are actually licensed as bars, then opt not to serve on-premises. It's truly bizarre.

 

[dutchboy62]

regular caps don't fit on Spaten either

 

[dontman]

I'm not really sure of the reasoning behind it, but it certainly makes tasting different beers extremely cost-prohibitive. Very occasionally, you might find a speciality grocery or gourmet store that has the license to sell six-packs or singles, but it's spendy and quite rare. I just drive into Maryland (less than 10 miles from my front door), although I've not bought a single commercial beer in over two months given my homebrew stockpile.

The laws are definitely archaic and a general PITA.

It was also really bad when I was building my collection of bottles. My wife likes Blue Moon so when I was going out to buy beer she would ask for that. And I could not do it! It was like $16 / six and $30 for a case and she only drinks one beer a month.

I no longer need reusable bottles since I have over 280 of them but I still cannot bring myself to buy any twist offs. I feel like I am paying a $.50 tax on any bottle that I can't reuse.

Then again, I have not bought any in a few months and I still have 20 of the 24 that I bought back then.

 

[drinkabeergle]

I felt like an ass the other day when I decided to put back a 4-pack of good looking pub-brown ale from Sprecher just because the bottles were twist off....My grocery store limits me enough without me limiting myself to pry offs.....damn! I'd be left only with three good brewery's to choose from (SN, New Glarus, Capital Brewery).....BTW, is Sprecher beer any good?

Wait; you're from WISCONSIN and can't find good beer!? That sounds like crazy-talk to me!

And yes, Sprecher is VERY good. If you go to the brewery (also in Wisconsin) you can get alcoholic Root Beer. Otherwise you can buy the non-alcoholic stuff and it is DELICIOUS.

 

[darkestdays]

Man, I wish Founder's beer had pop-off bottles. Everything they do is great, except the twist offs...

 

[TheCapn22]

A thought occurs... This would make for a nice Wiki entry. It would be nice to have a database of bottles people have had success with reusing. This would prevent me from buying another 2 cases of Boulevard (which comes in a closed box, so you can't see the bottles until you get them home) only to learn that they are twist off.

Yeah it really sucks that Boulevard uses twist offs being that it's so widely available in the Midwest, and I enjoy their beer.

 

[IrishLass]

I no longer need reusable bottles since I have over 280 of them but I still cannot bring myself to buy any twist offs. I feel like I am paying a $.50 tax on any bottle that I can't reuse.

Sounds like you need to start brewing more!!

 

[ConorE728]

I have a bunch of Stella bottles that I am going to use, took the labels off and tried capping it. From the looks of this thread a lot of people ran into the same situation as me, the cap didn't fit securely on the bottle.

Apparently if you use a 29mm cap, it will work just fine. Just remember to get the correct size crimping cup and you should be all set.

I would imagine that this would be helpful for a lot of other international brews that don't seem to take regular bottle caps.

 

[rico567]

Didn't notice Schlafly's (St. Louis Brewing) on the list. They use crown caps (pry-offs), and it's a good bottle, and (for removal) BEST LABELS EVER. Wish I could say the same for their beer, but I only like their stout and their dry-hopped APA. I've got a lot of Sam Adams, Red Hook, Newport Storm, Flying Dog, etc., and they all work. I've got some half-liter Euro beers, too (Franziskaner, Paulaner) and have no trouble capping them.....but I use Grandpa's old Prohibition-era bench capper, which may have something to do with it.

A heads-up: if you're looking for a sturdy larger (750ml) bottle, Martinelli's bottles their sparkling (non-alcoholic) cider in pry-offs. If you know any teetotaling cider-loving friends, steer them that way, then offer to recycle the bottles for them. I have used this bottle, and it caps fine with a regular crown cap, but wing cappers are dicey; use a bench capper if you have one.

Reusable bottle catch o' the year: The Tröeg's Mad Elf 101 oz. flip-top bottle.

Troegs Brewing Company

The EMPTY bottle weighs more than a small dog. It is awesome (and the beer ain't bad, from what I hear). My son scored one from some people, who had heard him talk about homebrewing and said "We got this funky bottle left over from a party....it's in the recycling....think you'd want it?"
Ya think?

 

[carnevoodoo]

I've got a swing top 3 liter bottle off Samichlaus that I will drink some day and reuse the heck out of the bottle.

 

[ChshreCat]

New Belgium bottles are pry off, but I've been having the worst luck with them breaking in my wing capper. I'm not reusing them anymore. It's a shame since I like their beer and buy it regularly.

 

[Jon38464]

The very first home brew I did which was about 2 months ago.I typically drink a few beers at home after work.I drink a beer with twist off lids.I decided I would do a little experiment,I boiled my lids I twisted off and poured a freshly open beer into a old sanitized bottle and put the lid I had boiled on it.After 1 week I opened it to think oh this is going to be flat,well it was fresh and crisp as a new beer.That being said my first brew I did I used twist off lids and screwed them back on with my hands and they were fresh as you could ask for.

 

[user 264719]

My son gave me some Dos Equis (XX) bottles - green - 12 oz. My caps and capper work perfectly with them.

 

[MaxStout]

Several years ago some craft breweries started moving from twist-offs to pop-tops if they weren't using the latter already. Summit Brewing here went through that switch 10 years or so ago, and there were others doing it. Perhaps it was marketing (twisties evoked a sort of "BMC" image), and there was the belief that pop-tops are better at sealing out air over the long term. Pop-tops were a kind of a de facto sign of real craft beer.

But more recently I've been seeing some craft brewers moving back to twist-offs. Maybe there is a cost savings, maybe they have improved the seal (or they're not worried about it as it will likely be consumed quickly). Maybe the fact that craft beer is more mainstream and a lot of buyers really don't care and they like the convenience. Maybe it's because so many craft breweries are now owned by major companies and that's what they have for bottling lines.

I used to use pop-top as one criteria for buying beer in the store, as I was building up a supply of bottles. If I needed a tie-breaker between two beers to buy, the pop-top won. Now that I have more bottles than I need (yeah, I still bottle), it's nice to just buy a beer I want, regardless if it's in pop-tops, twisties, or cans.