Capping question

[BlackDogBrewing]

I'm getting ready to bottle my first batch of home brew in the next week or so; I thought I'd hit the jackpot on a source for bottles. My dad drinks garbage PBR in large quantities...I took a few cases of empties from him and soaked all the bottles in OxyClean to get the labels off, then I realized they are screw tops!!
Can I still use these screw-top bottles with a regular capper and caps? Will they seal well? Or should I just recycle them and get better bottles? I've been keeping my empties for a few weeks, but I don't drink in such huge quanties as Pops does. Thanks.

 

[IowaHarry]

I use twist off bottles all the time. It is not a problem UNLESS. Here is the unless. Will your capper handle the smaller lip just under the top of the bottle? The two handed cappers have problems with them. If you have a bench capper it is not a consideration. The bench capper just mashes the cap down on the bottle. The two handled capper grabs around the neck of the bottle and forces the bottle into the cap pulling up on the ring just under the top of the bottle. Twist off bottles have a smaller ring. You better grab a bottle and make a couple of tests.

 

[Kilgore_Trout]

I <3 my screw tops. It was worth spending a few extra $ for the bench capper to me. I have a TON of them so it really expanded my bottling capacity.

Also, you can screw them off rather than fiddle with an opener which is much easier.

 

[BlackDogBrewing]

Thanks, I'll give it a few trys before I add any beer, I unfortunately just have a 2-handed capper, hmm, I guess I get to buy a new toy now!

 

[fratermus]

This pic was designed for a different purpose, but it might help illustrate the point Harry was making:

 

[BlackDogBrewing]

Excellent pics, thanks. I've decided to just drink up and save my regular bottles, recycle the screw caps bottles and I'll start accumulating flip-top bottles.

 

[Yunus]

I have a bench capper and I have tried to cap screw top bottles. In my limited experience I found that it did work, HOWEVER the caps were very very easy to unscrew and this was a problem for me. If you leave them untouched they are fine but the slightest twist and they come right off. Now maybe I was doing something wrong but I decided against using them for this reason.

 

[twig]

I've tried a couple of different 2-handed cappers on twist-off bottles, and found breakage to be the biggest issue. I found on about 2 bottles per 5 gallon batch the neck would break as we were capping the bottle. The biggest annoyance was not the loss of beer, but rather the cap & broken bottle top getting so firmly stuck in the capper that it takes 20 minutes to chip away the glass to the point where I could grab the cap with some pliers. I'm not sure if it's the thinner glass or just the way in which the capper grabs the neck of the bottle (as in the pics above), but they seem to break much more frequently than non-twist-offs.

I just look at it as a good excuse for sampling a bigger variety of craft and import beers, as they seem less likely to come in twist-offs. (Really, Honey, I'm just buying this six-pack because I need some more bottles.)

 

[BlackDogBrewing]

I've tried a couple of different 2-handed cappers on twist-off bottles, and found breakage to be the biggest issue. I found on about 2 bottles per 5 gallon batch the neck would break as we were capping the bottle. The biggest annoyance was not the loss of beer, but rather the cap & broken bottle top getting so firmly stuck in the capper that it takes 20 minutes to chip away the glass to the point where I could grab the cap with some pliers. I'm not sure if it's the thinner glass or just the way in which the capper grabs the neck of the bottle (as in the pics above), but they seem to break much more frequently than non-twist-offs.

I just look at it as a good excuse for sampling a bigger variety of craft and import beers, as they seem less likely to come in twist-offs. (Really, Honey, I'm just buying this six-pack because I need some more bottles.)

I actually used this line on my wife this weekend...

 

[smokysalsa]

i have a bench capper, and it works great on screw off bottles, i had to use a bottle opener to open the bottles, could not twist them off.

 

[ifishsum]

I'd suggest trying to cap one with your capper set-up first, if it seems to work alright then use only 6 of them on your next batch. That way if they don't seal properly or there's any other problems you haven't wasted a whole batch.

The ones I've tried with my wing capper have sealed fine, but I only use them when I'm low on bottles. And once they're capped I've never been able to twist them back off, they need an opener.