what to do with excessive bottles

[Pappers_]

No, we already discussed this. Expecting a restaurant/bar to hold onto a massive pile of bottles is unreasonable since it would be a big hassle and take up too much space. That's why you go there on a busy night and take it off their hands right before they throw them out.

And actually I don't think I would be able to take bottles from texas and deposit them in another state. I think these bottles are marked for deposit by state and I think ajlee is right so that wouldn't work either.

But hey, I'm glad to know that I can have free bottles for my homebrews and if I wanted to take up any crazy hobbies that involved a lot of bottles I could do that.

Yes, that's what I do - go to the pub, ask a server I 'm friendly with to save some bottles and take them home with me that night. I also share my handmade beer with those servers.

 

[irchowi]

I think I bit off more than I can chew. This right here is only a few hundred bottles, and only from a friday night.



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Good thing is most of them aren't twist offs except the bud lights. Can you even imagine 60000 bottles? Can't believe I even thought about moving that kind of numbers.

 

[bottlebomber]

Your wife is gonna be piiiisssed...

 

[ajlee]

Could start selling to home brewers on ebay, CL, or the HBT classifieds.

 

[irchowi]

I was wrong about most of them not being twist-offs. I think something like 50-60% of the bottles were bud light, which were twist-offs. I had to pick out all the ones that weren't and throw out or recycle the twist offs. There were coronas, dos equis, and various mexican beers that i'm not too familiar with. All in all, I think I still came out with a few hundred bottles. This is plenty so I've told the restaurant I don't need anymore (lol)

So the next challenge is to remove the bottle labels. I did some reading and seems like plastic-glued on labels are fairly easy to remove with a soak of star-san, oxyclean and various other cleaners. Painted on labels like coronas appear to be much tougher but some say that a 30 minute soak in CLR will do the trick.

I'm not sure if I have to give them all a quick rinse to get rid of beer residue before I soak them...

After the labels are removed I will have to sanitize them. I'll have to think about how to do that later.

 

[boscobeans]

Wash them out with hot water and visually check for crap like mold, cigarette butts etc.

Let them drain and dry until you want to remove labels. Some oxy from the next step will also clean them on the inside.

Oxy in hot water...Overnight soak and then a quick rub with a scrubby sponge and they are clean.. Painted labels..I leave them as is.

RINSE WELL with hot water. Store you clean bottles in a clean dust free place..Covered..

Quick spray with StarSan (vinator) and fill em with beer.

bosco

 

[passedpawn]

Clearwater picks up my recycling bin every Monday. I pay for it. They don't take glass, only newspapers, aluminum and plastic.

 

[bobbrewedit]

Wash them out with hot water and visually check for crap like mold, cigarette butts etc.

Let them drain and dry until you want to remove labels. Some oxy from the next step will also clean them on the inside.

Oxy in hot water...Overnight soak and then a quick rub with a scrubby sponge and they are clean.. Painted labels..I leave them as is.

RINSE WELL with hot water. Store you clean bottles in a clean dust free place..Covered..

Quick spray with StarSan (vinator) and fill em with beer.

bosco

This is how I would do it also...hot water rinse, inspect for crap, soak in PBW overnight, bottle brush and rinse...then sanitize with Idophor just before you fill em.

 

[Onlooker]

Painted labels..I leave them as is.

Yes. I don't see the point in going to the trouble of trying to remove those, nor others that are darned near impossible to get off. Sure you're not going to use them for gifts or taking out of the house, etc. But you're surely going to have plenty of others for that.

I'm envious of the OP's bottle source, for sure. All the local places in my neck of the woods serve twist offs almost exclusively. I got a bunch off Craigs List, and had to drive an hour for those.

 

[divrguy]

Can someone enlighten me on how this system works in USA?

Here in The Neterlands they sell all beer in bottles in a plastic crate:

That's 24 bottles of 33 centiliters in a crate. Each bottle is 10 cents deposit, an empty crate is 1,50
So far a empty crate with empty bottles you get 3,90 deposit back.
With a little effort you can 'buy' those returned crates from the local supermarket for the same deposit.

The bottles are great quality and you can use them without problems for refermantation on the bottle.

So empty bottles and crates never are an issue here in NL.

What an awesome system Koffie! I wish we did that here in the states. My buddy flies to Germany and they do the same. Nice plastic crates with each case of beer and really nice bottles.

 

[biochemedic]

FWIW, most "painted" on labels come off with an overnight StarSan soak and a light scrub... OxyClean works best for regular labels...

 

[Hackwood]

I got all my bottles off of a customer that HAD brewed a few years ago and got out of it due to ....... 'farts'. (might be a long story).

He actually hooked me up with 2 (pretty much) complete brew setups AND a crap-load of bottles for free. I take him a couple of brews when I;m in the area and that's the deal.

As far as the OPs hook-up on the bottles, I'd do as others have said and cherry-pick quite a few and get rid of the twisties and visit every once in a while if nothing more then to hook others that homebrew up. CL an add for free or cheap cheap bottles and help your brethren out. GL

 

[irchowi]

I used lime-a-way which is another version of CLR or any product that removes calcium, lime, and rust. About 30 seconds soak and any painted label like heineken will wipe off. It's still kind of a PITA and because you need 100% concentration of CLR and those things don't exactly come in large volumes I'm not sure it's worth it.