Methods of obtaining bottles

[shlegminitism]

As a college student, and a broke one at that, i am looking into cheaper ways to obtain bottles than buying them from the local homebrew shop. It makes since to look around some of the local bars and buddy up with a bartender and see if they will set some aside for you. I tried this last night, but it was a large Taco mac, and the gm basically said that would be bad for their business if they had to keep up with bottles during business hours, which made since. I imagine smaller bars would be easier. I considered dumpster diving, but they share a compacter with many other of the stores in the area, so that was a bad idea.

The bartender suggested going to a recycling center, saying that he though some of them resold bottles for under 30 cents a bottle, which i think is reasonable, and i am going to try that today or tomorrow.

Anyone have any other tried and true methods other than saving the ones from the fridge?

 

[KingBrianI]

Shoot, skip the recycling center and go straight to the source. If you're in college you're in a college town, which means lots of apartment complexes filled with college students. Go to the recycling drop off for any complex and grab what you need out of the bottle bin.

 

[mplutodh1]

Hit up Costco or Sams Club - buy the biggest, pack of the cheapest (non twist) beer, have some buddies over for the game over the weekend and go to town. Or just ask your buddies to start saving bottles. The other thing to consider is going with the larger bottles - you need fewer of them - bummer is they typically cost more for the beer but it's usually better beer anyways.

Other option is to watch Craigslist. I've seen from time to time guys selling their bottles for pretty cheap.

Good luck on the hunt - and be prepared for the pain in the rear process of sanitizing and bottling a batch You might soon be a fellow kegger after doing a few batches.

 

[rsmith179]

$20.00 is all it should cost to get a batch's worth of bottles. You can then keep reusing those bottles as they get emptied. I started off with about 100 bottles bought from the store and save others commerical bottles I have drank. I now have more bottles than I know what to do with!

 

[RugenBrau]

Go to a small bar. They would be glad to sell them for twice the deposit. Most will give them to you for the deposit.........Tell them you'll bring back some samples.

 

[shlegminitism]

$20.00 is all it should cost to get a batch's worth of bottles. You can then keep reusing those bottles as they get emptied. I started off with about 100 bottles bought from the store and save others commerical bottles I have drank. I now have more bottles than I know what to do with!

At the local homebrew shop, 15 bucks gets 24 12oz bottles. Where do you buy yours from? For a batch worth (5 gallon) you would need around 55 12oz bottles, which would be a bit more than 20 bucks for me.

 

[pweizman]

Hmmm...like someone said, go to the source.

A fraternity house.

I could have collected a case of bottles a week back then. Maybe not all pop offs...but a good portion.

Patrick

 

[Csuho]

http://www.brewmasterswarehouse.com/product/0101544/case-12-oz-beer-bottle-amber

probably your cheapest, legit and cleanest way to get them.

 

[springer]

We have a 5 cent deposit on beer soda and now bottled water(idiots) we can just buy the empties for the deposit at the beer store they are happy to get them out of the store . I had about 200 bottles down to about 10 swing tops.

 

[TipsyDragon]

personally im a fan of just buying my own pry-off beer and drinking the beer and keeping the bottles. hold a BYOB party and go sifting through the empties after looking for brown pry-off bottles. just be sure to wash the crap out of them before you use them.

 

[tallybrewer]

Or really go ghetto & use two liter soda bottles. They work great.