plastic bottle and reusable caps for wine?

[Zurd]

Any cheap plastic bottle of 750 ml with reusable caps I can buy for my wine?

The bottles will be less heavy, kind of unbreakable and will be even cheaper with reusable caps. I'm in Canada, anything I find on the internet is not cheap but maybe I'm missing something.

Is anyone using reusable caps? I would guess that they doesn't last forever, how long can they be reused?

 

[Seamonkey84]

Problem with thin plastic bottles (like soda bottles) over time is they allow oxygen through. Better bottles used for fermentation are much thicker and are basically as good as glass when it comes to oxygen permeability.
Here’s a set I did find, but costs as much as a case of glass bottles
https://www.amazon.com/Plastic-Bottles-Screw-Green-750ml/dp/B00ILC4A7S

 

[Zurd]

I've found them too in my search. I love them but I live in Canada, we have it on Amazon Canada and they are very expensive. If I buy 60 of them, it's a total of 434$ CAN + taxes + shipping. You would think that plastic bottle wouldn't cost that much It would take me 361 batch of wine to recoup this investment by not buying caps. And the reviews are quite bad, lots of leaking with those bottles.

Do you happen to know how long those Novatwist caps last?

I was wondering if anyone is using other types of bottle that are cheaper than those. I don't think permeability is really an issue as I drink my wine quite fast, bottles last maximum 4 months, most are drank in less than 2 months.

 

[Seamonkey84]

I stopped looking and just bought a floor corker, get used bottles from friends.

 

[bucketnative]

Have you thought about stand-up pouches? - https://astrapouch-na.com/products/starter-kits/

 

[z-bob]

One liter and 500ml carbonated beverage bottles. (I like the ones tonic water comes it, and the tall skinny 17 oz flavored sparkling water bottles from Costco.) The plastic is strong and pretty thick, and you can reuse the original caps quite a few times. I probably wouldn't store anything in them over about a year, except maybe sherry where slight oxygen permeability might be a good thing.

 

[Zurd]

Hey thanks everyone for your suggestions, this is great!

I have a floor corker already and it's true that wine kits come with corks, so it's kind of free. But I find it to be a pain to put them on. Takes also much more time to open the bottle than anything else. I've never bottled a batch with corks even though I can.

Stand-up pouches looks great, they are only about 1$ each but you need to buy a box of 350 minimum, that is a lot ahah and nowhere do I read that you can wash and re-use them, doesn't seem a good idea in the long term. I've also read before than wine box kit are hard to wash.

Carbonated beverage bottles seems a very good idea. Since they store carbonated fluid, it has to be thicker plastic than anything else. And I'm sure you can buy plastic caps for them somewhere so you never runs out. How long can you reuse the caps? How do you know when to replace them? When the bottle leaks?

What about just plain regular plastic beer bottles for wine? Anyone is doing that? I even just found some saying they come with "Oxygen Barrier" like these: https://www.amazon.ca/Mr-Beer-Deluxe-Homebrewnig-Bottling/dp/B00OCIR2ES/

 

[bmd2k1]

Swing top glass grolsch style bottles work great! [emoji111] Various sizes & colors available [emoji16]

 

[Zurd]

Indeed, I love those grolsch type bottle, never used them before but they come with a reusable caps, that's awesome! However, do they make it in plastic since it is what I'm looking for?

 

[Zurd]

I finished my testing of bottling wine in plastic bottles and the results is too much oxidation, the wine doesn't taste that good. Drinkable but harsh. I don't recommend.

For the test, I bottled most of the wine in glass (control group) and only two bottles in plastic, one which had tonic water in it before and the other plastic bottle is a Cosmo Round Amber from here:
https://www.newdirectionsaromatics....ars/cosmo-round-amber-pet-plastic-bottle.html
That way, I can compare the taste of the wine glass versus plastic. I waited only 2 weeks after bottling before doing the tests. And I tried with two different wine batch. The glass bottle tasted much better.

I only tested two types of plastic bottles, maybe there's a better one out there like the "Oxygen barrier" plastic bottle that I didn't try but for now I will stick to glass. Thanks everyone for the information!

 

[z-bob]

I mostly put bottle conditioned sparkling wine in plastic bottles. I *think* the yeast scavenge the oxygen while they are carbonating it. Then I drink it young. It's good to know that only a few weeks is enough to tell the difference with still wines. Thanks for posting your results

 

[Erik the Awful]

I've been reusing liquor bottles if they have nice caps. If you know a bartender, they can probably hook you up with plenty of empties. I also occasionally find swing-top liter bottles for under two bucks a piece. My friends and family know they need to return the bottles if they want more wine.