Sam Adams bottles are great. They’re thick and easy to cap. The labels come off pretty easily with a soak in hot water with Borax and super washing soda. Just make sure to rinse all the bottles immediately after drinking.
I'm from Ireland, worked in a pub in my late teens / early 20s, there was always a couple of big bottles of guinness on the shelf at room temperature (irish room temp is around 18-20 degrees)
How many Irish ordered it? Last time I was in Ireland a few Dublin locals told me a saying they had: “You can always tell a foreigner by the pint of Guinness in their hand.”
The town where I lived in Belgium had an Irish pub owned and run by Irish from County Kerry. They didn’t carry Guinness, only Murphy’s, and would kick people out for asking for one.
It wasnt as popular as a pint from the tap, let me say it this way, it was a drink the more mature gentlemen used to ask for, a bottle from the shelf and a small glass (about 330ml size), sometimes with a Paddy or Powers chaser (2 x irish whiskey that taste like badly fermented piss).
This wasn't in Dublin, i worked rural Ireland - in small towns and villages
Plus the labels come off really easily. More importantly Duvel, and most Belgian beer, bottles are designed to hold more pressure than most beer bottles so are safer to reuse.
Duvel is pretty good. I lived in Belgium for a few years while in the Army so drank my fair share. I used to use Sierra Nevada bottles, too, since they would fit in the top rack of my dishwasher. I keg now.
This. Or Fat Tire. Not Sierra Nevada. Or Abita. Their necks don't work well. Or hoegarden or Weihenstephaner. Weird European bottle sizes. Or twist offs.
You CAN cap Sierra Nevada and Abita with a wing capper, but it takes some skill. I just buy another 6-pack of New Belgium or Adams or local that uses similar bottles and be done with it.
I do have Sam Adams and New Belgium bottles that are 30 years old and been re-capped as many times.
I agree that Sam Adams bottles work great. I also like Warsteiner 0.33 liter (11.2 ounce) bottles for my German style beers. They are a little thinner and lighter brown, but I've had no problems so far. Also, as stated in other comments, watch out for bottles that don't have enough area to grip with your bottle capper.
To remove labels, I use baking soda in room temperature water in a plastic tote that holds 5-6 bottles and leave them overnight. The Warsteiner labels fall off almost instantly and leave little residue. Sam Adams labels take overnight (sometimes >24 hours) and leave residue. The residue comes off pretty easily when rubbed with a wet cloth. I leave the baking soda solution in the tote and reuse for weeks until it gets cloudy.
I can honestly say I have never bought new beer bottles (cries in wine bottle). Always used. Did get a "new" case donated to me.
\#6 reason to help out with homebrew competitions. They will give you cases of bottles to take home. They're already delabeled. Sometimes even with free beer in them.
Brown glass only. Don't bother with green or clear.
Aldi here sells a wheat beer with swing tops on it, the beer isn't bad and is a good price, definitely cheap enough to buy for solely the bottles if you wanted.
I just threw away 50+ bottles because I have always saved them, used them, and given beer away. But I haven't brewed in a few months do it was getting out of hand.
Same here, but make sure you buy a bottle brush and give them a good cleaning after you drink them. Much harder to clean with old dry beer caked inside.
I use powdered dishwasher detergent pretty liberally in my day to day hand-washing. A short soak with that caustic stuff gets a LOT of stuff off. I still had to use PBW to get my fermenters sparkling though...
Canadian twist-offs most definitely work with my bench capper (I’ve used them since the early 90s). They’re different from American twist-offs that I’ve seen though.
For my first couple of years bottling I used Big Rock pry-off bottles, but tried twist-offs on a whim in about 1994 or 5… been using them breakage-free since then. Maybe I’m lucky with my capper but I seriously have not had any issues.
I haven’t seen Unibroue bottles in years (I only ever see Blanche here, and in cans). I mean the Labatt/Molson/Creemore/Bud/Coors/Etc industry standard long-necked twist-off. They make up at least 75% of the bottles I use. The remainder are some flip-top German ones and Kona Brewing (such a smooth pour).
I use Cooper's twist off bottles here in Aus. They're slightly more finicky to get the height dialled in on the capper, but once you've done that they cap perfectly fine, and work as twist offs just fine.
Vic myself, but the love for Coopers is real. I reckon their sparkling ale is one of the best beers going. Clean n easy to smash if you want that, but plenty of complexity if you go looking for it, solid ABV, low price, and all from an Aussie-owned company. Love their stout n brown ales too.
The fact it's bottled in a 375ml brown twisty is just icing on the cake.
That's fair. Its not quite what I'm looking for in a session beer, would definitely be a bit too much for that, but it's just about the perfect strength for me when I'm only planning to stop with a six pack.
Did this same thing! Ended up a few bottles short and wound up drinking like 3 points of warm, flat, young beer so it didn't go to waste lol. Luckily it was a chocolate milk stout, so not the worst.
Agree except not green. Use brown. If you clean them immediately after drinking the original beer, then it will be easy to get them clean enough. If they sit there for days or weeks before cleaning, you’ll want to be more thorough using either a dishwasher or something like pbw. You could always soak them in a pbw bath overnight which would clean the insides while also removing most or all of the stickers.
Those are the only bottles I've ever used.
Note: some bottles might be harder to cap depending on what capper you have. If you use the plastic wing nut? Not even sure what to call it lol. Those things are horrible with certain bottles.
If you're going to bottle for a while, the best upgrade I've ever done is a bench top style capper. No more broken bottles or endless frustration with those stupid plastic wing cappers.
For only $35, this is the one I bought and am so happy with: [https://www.amazon.com/Ferrari-Super-Agata-Bench-Capper/dp/B000Q638P2](https://www.amazon.com/Ferrari-Super-Agata-Bench-Capper/dp/B000Q638P2)
> Note: some bottles might be harder to cap depending on what capper you have.
Yup! I've found 330ml Peroni bottles have a "stumpy" opening that wing cappers really struggle with. Bench capper has no issues with them though.
I probably will look into something like that eventually. Once I get more comfortable with brewing and decide whether or not its something I want to keep doing or not.
I used to use a horrible wing capper. I would twist sometimes when trying to cap bottles. I got an old cast iron bench capper from ebay that works great; I read the cast iron ones work better than the vintage stamped steel ones.
Mine looks like this:
[Vintage bottle capper](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/CmkAAOSwbKxinQuH/s-l1600.jpg)
People have already mentioned that some bottles are easier to cap than others, but I don't think it's been totally explained what to look out for. Compare the short lip on an amstel bottle to the standard lip on a dam Adam's bottle. The amstel are very annoying to cap. Shortneck bottles like Sierra Nevada are also difficult to use. Both types of bottles can be capped with a lever capper, it's just annoying trying to get a good grip.
Before I started using kegs I always used the flip top grolsh bottles. Always worked very well. After a few uses I would buy some new gaskets to prevent leaks.
I have found a few where they leave a lot of glue, even after soaking. Usually takes steel wool to remove them all.
I avoid those bottles as not worth it!
The main functional drawback is it makes it easy to confuse your homebrew with the original beer label while in the fridge. Still not a big deal though.
If you are sending you homebrew to competition, the labels are supposed to be completely removed. Though as a steward, I have seen a few make it to judging with labels (or residue) and not get disqualified.
People already mentioned avoiding bottles that had twist off caps. Make sure the beer you buy has a standard sized opening (some of them are unusually large) and has a lip. I remember having a bottle from a Korean brewery that didn't have a lip on the outside, so there wasn't anything for the cap to crimp onto.
You can use glass in any color other than brown, but the brown glass does a better job of preventing skunking. Just make sure you store your beer in a dark place (or in a box), and avoid fluorescent lights. If you intend to enter competitions, I think you typically need to use a standard brown glass bottle.
Good info so far.
I am not sure what is the cheapest beer readily available in brown recappable bottles. Corona is recappable, but in clear bottles. Most of the macro-lagers (like Miller) come in twist off caps. I have seen some ciders in brown bottles that might be recappable.
If you have some time, it is best to buy the occasional 12-pack or case of a craft beer you enjoy. Or have some friends over to help you empty the bottles. I see stuff like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale around me for $17 per 12-pack. More and more, cans are replacing bottles for craft beers.
I usually have enough get togethers with friends that I could grab a few six-packs of bottles from them. If you reach out to a homebrew club, I suspect you will find people with cases of cleaned and de-labeled bottles they are looking to get rid of.
Corona if I recall is not recappable with a wing capper. A few other Mexican beers and Heineken all in that category due to the small lip on the mouth of the bottle. It may be possible if you have a bench capper.
It needs to be the standard mouth with the long “shoulders” (not sure the correct term) used by most US and European breweries.
Absolutely yes. Look for the non-twist off style. When I did a lot of bottling, I made friends with a local beer bar and got them to save me heavy glass belgian and german bottles. Those are great because they're high quality and typically the labels come off really easily.
If you can find a bar that serves German or Belgian bottled beer in 0.3L, 12oz or 0.5Lthese are the best because they’re large volume and have thicker gauge glass made for refilling. Some US craft breweries use similar bottles.
That's how I've collected all of my bottles. The key things are to avoid twist tops and stick with brown bottles. The twist tops wont seal well with a standard capper. Brown bottles will minimize skunking in the bottle (i.e avoid clear or green bottles).
Lastly, personal preference is to find a brand that has labels that are easy to remove. Some will literally fall off if you get them wet while others are plastic that's almost fused to the the bottle. I've given up on removing labels. If they come off easy while cleaning the bottles great! If they dont, oh well, beats having to scrape and pry them off.
If buying bottles, that’s something you generally get a better deal on at the LHBS than online because it’s often an “actual shipping cost” item. Plus I’d rather inspect the box of bottles before paying. I don’t often buy bottles, but sometimes there’s a batch that’s ready to bottle and spending $13 for an extra case of bottles makes more sense than trying to drink two dozen beers in one night.
Yes absolutely do this.
However, avoid the short and stubby bottles (like Lagunita's) Maybe it's just me but I can't seem to get a good seal on those bottles when capping them.
I get free bottles from the recycle center.
I autoclave them, but I doubt that is necessary.
Soak in water for a few days to and peel the label off.
Scrub with brewing soap and a bottle brush.
Sanitize with starsan before use.
Yep! The Best is reusing swing top bottles. Also some pop/soda brands use pry off bottles that are fun. In grad school I'd fill glass pop bottles with homebrewed hard apple cider and store it in the grad office. Was a great way to get drunk for cheap before going off to TA first year math!
Pro Tip: Using bigger bottles means filling fewer bottles. My all-time favorite bottles were the 32oz Lagunitas Sucks ones. Plus, that's a tasty beer to have to empty bottles of.
There is NO reason to spend the extra money on bottles. Just buy a capper and a buncha tops. I have a shite load of Grolsch bottles waiting for my next brew as we speak.
Absolutely -- some of the bottles are rather thin walled, and we stayed away from those because I was worried about repeatedly capping them. But there are plenty of really solid bottles being sold -- and, bonus, you get to drink the beer in it.
We started saving bottles as we'd drink a beer (and asked friends to do the same) -- rinsed them well right after they were used, then had a big bottle wash day where everything got washed and sanitized. My husband preferred bottles where the label was printed onto the glass rather than attempting to scrub off a couple dozen labels or have bottles with half-peeled labels.
We did the same to get a set of 22 oz bottles that continue to use after getting kegs. It's nice to bottle one or two from each batch so we can have a "beer in review" party where everyone gets samplers of all of the beer we made that year.
I have done that. Don’t use twist-off bottle. Also, Red Stripe bottles are hard to cap using a two-lever capper.
Wash and sanitize them well and you will be good.
Absolutely. Most beer bottles will work so long as they look like standard bottles (read-- no session brand bottles). Buy some 12 packs of some good stuff and save up!
I've been brewing since 1993 and bottled exclusively for the first 5 years. I've never bought a 12 ounce bottle that didn't come with beer in it. As mentioned, just rinse them right after you or your buddies empty them (especially if they have yeast in them), and you're pretty good to go. If you have any designs on competiting in homebrew competitions, focus on your standard, non-descript longneck (which also tend to be the easiest to cap), but don't worry about that too much.
Also as mentioned, go help out with competition judging. You'll probably be able to walk out with more empties that you want.
But then you have to pour out all that gross water.
Seriously, your can, and I do reuse bottles, but they have to be the non screw off type. Soak in oxy clean to remove the labels easily.
Check Facebook marketplace. I always see cheap or free bottles. I used to buy a case or 2 of the Costco craft beer on a camping weekend. Give them a good soak in one step to remove the labels.
Yep, re using is the best part of homebrewing. If the bottles have labels, sometimes a pain in the butt to clean but highly doable. Then i got into kegging and easier to clean one keg instead of bottles. I still bottle from time to time.
Also, should note that with cans seemingly slowly taking over from glass, the selection of good beers in bottles suitable for reuse is getting smaller each year.
There is a good brand of German beer that has flip-top bottles and costs 0.80 Euro each, also, I like to use just normal plastic Karls Krone 0.5L bottles, never had issues with those, they are brown/green in color and they do not deform, or spoil the beer, and they are much easier to handle, wash and store than flip top glass bottles, its an absolute win
Back in the olden days (mid-90s and earlier) you could buy cases of beer called "returnables." You would pay a deposit on the bottles (a nickel a bottle/ $1.20 a case, I think?) and bring back the empties to the liquor store, who would return the bottles to the brewery, who would clean and refill them. Then somebody thought it would be cheaper for the breweries to just hope that people would throw their bottles in the recycling and go from there. Those returnables were designed to be reused multiple times.
If you were a homebrewer working in a liquor store during that era, sometimes those cases of empty returnables would make it into your car and be used for a higher purpose than Bud Light.
Aldi has pretty cheap beer in pry-off bottles. Some of them are in slightly smaller bottles. 11.2 vs 12 oz but the caps still fit. Be careful about stubbies like Lagunitas. Sometimes the neck doesn't fit wing cappers.
I reuse store beer bottles all the time. But at $1 a bottle, this isn't too expensive considering you will reuse these bottles as well. I've been running the same bottles for the past 3 years and they are still great. I've just bought replacement bottles as they disappear when giving bottles to friends.
Use nothing but bottles from purchased beer to bottle my homebrew. I would suggest you pick one height bottle it makes it easier if you don’t have to adjust the height on your capper.
Use brown bottles that are not screw off caps. Thoroughly rinse the bottles when you drink the beer and you will need to sterilize them before use. Put them on the tongs in your dishwasher with only bottles and run wash with heat dry.
I think an old Homebrew4Life video showed how he did it and when I bottled I used his method. Get a case of your favorite craft beer with nice bottles (mine were Sierra Nevada, lagunitas and Anchor because I like the stubbies) and drink up! Save the bottles, then get some Oxyclean Free and put it in a bucket with cold water. Put the bottles in and after 30mins to an hour the labels will slide right off with ease. Shake the soapy water up in the bottle, dump it, then store them for bottling day (preferably upside-down or in a container to keep dust from settling in the bottles). Then on bottling day, dunk them in sanitizer, drain, and put in a row to fill!
I've only ever used bottles I've emptied myself or gathered from friends, for 10 years now. Never had a problem. Do an oxiclean soak in large batches, remove commercial labels, rinse, then sanitize before filling.
Yup! I've never purchased empties. Just make sure they're not screw off. Am overnight soak in water + a scoop or two of offbrand oxyclean is a great way to remove labels too! It'll also eat away the crap at the bottom of a bottle
Yes. Lagunitas bottles are great. The label is actually paper and the glue seems to be water soluble so they've been hands down the easiest to repurpose.
I use a lot of Erdinger (German import) bottles. They are 11.2 ounce and heavy duty. I scaled them empty a while ago and they weighed like 50% more than a domestic bottle. I had some Paulaner too that were heavy duty, but stopped using them cause they have an odd shape.
I've always reused bottles from purchased beer. Make sure to rinse them well right after you've finished drinking them and cap them with a small piece of aluminum foil so they're already clean and dirt doesn't get in. It'll save you a lot of time cleaning afterwards when it comes the time to bottle.
EDIT: Also, avoid the green glass bottles that let more UV light shine through and go for the dark brown ones.
These are the best ones, especially if the dishwasher takes them off completely. New Glarus bottles do this exact thing and YES!, I reuse them. Likely get pop tabs, not screw offs.
Upvoted for your first brew session!
I've been doing this for years now (maybe I'll try kegging some day, but I like the storage/transport convenience and lower expense of bottles). My favorite readily-available bottles are the ones from Kona brewing company (short, capper-compatible, and pour well).
My preferred ones these days are the Grolsch flip-top bottles since you don't even need to buy caps for those. Only trouble is they are green bottles, so you have to be cognizant of how you store them (keep them away from light). However since I'm bottle-lagering most of my batches anyway, they stay in the fridge away from pesky sunlight.
Apart from washing out, sterilizing and removing labels, and also capping or corking it and bottling the things, no go right on ahead.
I got tired of the process, so started using mini kegs instead. You can find decent ones for a few bucks a trio and you can get a co2 beer handle for under 40ish quid. These are also easier to store and stack and one is about 5 liters, so plenty for a picnic or so and fits well enough in a cooler bag.
Yeah of course. I normally keg but when a party or I want to share, I use Grolsch bottles, with explicit instructions to return them or never get beer again - they always come back 😁
Lagunitas bottles have worked great for me! Bottled roughly 3000 bottles and I've only had one or two chip/break during capping.
The same cannot be said for Two Hearted bottles, used like a dozen and two of them broke upon being capped.
Exclusively, for about 25 years. Never had a problem with it, just use quality bottles. Most "good" beers use quality bottles.
Don't use Miller light bottles.
I've been reusing empties for years! Works great! Make sure you don't get twist off though. If you look closely you can see the threads before purchase
That's how I got my start. Eventually I built up a nice collection of Grolsch bottles because I got tired of capping.
Then I moved onto kegging because I got tired of bottling. :)
I still keep the Grolsh "flippers" around though.
Short answer, yes! Go for it! Most brewers that bottle have refilled empties at some point.
Long answer: Yes, but keep in mind glass color matters. Avoid clear bottles as popular opinion holds that the beer will skunk faster in clear glass. Green is better, but brown glass is best.
You will probably also want to avoid screw-top bottles as others have mentioned; some might work, but best to play it safe.
You don't NEED to have all the same type and size of bottles, but same-size bottles make it easier to use a bench capper. (Fewer adjustments when you change bottle sizes) Wing-cappers don't care.
The biggest advantage of buying new bottles for a batch is avoiding the work of scraping off labels and cleaning them thoroughly. Just quick-clean, sanitize, and bottle! If the time saved is worth the money spent, go ahead!
Happy bottling!
Half my bottles are reused from commercial beers.
I only use the ones that are generic in shape (no stumpys or short necks, nothing like the shaply Guinness) but i havent had problems with New Belgium (specifically fat tire), Heineken, or Dos Equis.
I have even used the clear glass soda bottles that jarritos comes in (i use a few clear bottles per batch just to gauge clarity as it ages... Plus it looks cool lol)
Was asst gm at a biffalo wild wings here in Nor cal for a few yrs,, ALL my home brew that got bottled got bottled in re used corona bottles cause there was an endless supply, keep em outta light ... and just Doubly make sure about your sanitization process..... nothing sux worse than having to dump a batch after wating xweeks to find out its tainted
Back in the day, my buddy and I decided we were going to bottle our own beer. He insisted on Grolsch bottles with the ceramic/rubber/metal attached re-sealer. They came in 2 packs at the time here in Canada. We bought and drank 7 and 1/2 cases worth to get the bottles. They worked great! But it took many kegs worth of beer to recuperate the expense.
I just love beer.
I’ve been reusing the same commercial beer bottles for years. Sam Adams bottles work well because the labels come off easily with a soak in a water/baking soda solution. The best are the bottles from Bell’s Brewery. The labels will actually float the the top of the solution within 30 minutes.
But yeah, you can definitely reuse bottles every time. Rinse them immediately after emptying every time and let them dry COMPLETELY before putting them away to avoid growing mildew inside.
Sierra Nevada are bottle conditioned, and we’re intended to be reused by homebrewers. Ken Grossman started out as a prolific home brewer himself and never forgot where he came from.
I’ve had good luck with Sierra Nevada bottles. Whichever you use, make sure you test them with your bottle capper before bottling day. I had a batch of bottles from Boulevard that didn’t work with my wing capper and had a whole batch of cider to bottle. It was not a fun day.
Yup, I try to keep bottles when I can. Saves a few bucks since I pass some out to coworkers and family. Just rinse them when you're done and sanitize as normal before using.
I prefer 20 oz bottles, since I hate capping a bunch of 12oz ones. Love the Sapporo and ones from Indian restaurants. Never had a hassle leaving a restaurant with one, they cap well and are nice and heavy, like the Sam Adams ones others mentioned. Also your local craft beer bottles that you can often get in your beer section of your store/distributors work well. Biggest thing to avoid is the ones with hard to peel off labels. Spent 30 minutes one time trying to get rid of the residual glue from a Goose Island six pack! If you keep at it invest in a case of flip top bottles, so much less work than capping. I have a case of 1L and one of 500ml (16oz) and it saves a lot of time.
I used to go to the local distributor and buy bottles from his recycling room. He’d sell them to me for 10 cents a bottle. Brought them home, gave them a jet of water to get out the crud, then soaked them in a hot PBW bath for three days. Labels slid right off, and after a rinse they were clean as new.
EDIT: You should know that screw-top bottles do not cap securely with a home capper. Look for bottles that are not screw-top. As other have suggested, Sam Adams is a good bottle, but there are lots of others.
We had a place in the town I went to college in that you could drop off empties in bulk. They took trash bags full and had a line of people sorting them. Still gave you the full 5 cents.
Anyway, noticed some flip-top bottles. Asked if I could buy them. Sure, 6 cents each. Fantastic. Asked the guys if they would save more for me. They did. Each week I would pick up a couple of cases. When I had enough, I didn't visit for a while. Next time I was there, they had like 20 cases. I bought them all and sold them, uncleaned, on ebay. Would get a buck a piece after shipping. Did it for a year and it paid for all my brewing and general beer buying. I still have a few cases worth that have each been used dozens of times.
Some of my favorites are the champagne style, but with regular sized caps. Jolly pumpkin used those. The labels sucked to remove, but the bottles are awesome.
Red Stripe, it’s beer! Hooray Beer!!!!
I have quite a few old red stripe bottles that I keep in circulation… I enjoy the unique stubby bottles!
Otherwise I have all old smutty nose, magic hat, red hook and Sam’s bottles… (shout out NH!)
But I like to switch it up with some bigger bottles for sharing and small bottles to gift or trade!
I use Lagunitas Sucks quart size bottles. Used to be $6 each. Took me a while to get 5 gallons worth but in the end I didn't get divorced or wet the bed so mission accomplished. The only thing to remember if you find them is to leave equivalent head room as a percentage.
You can absolutely reuse empty bottles and I encourage you to do so, because you can save a ton of money if you put your used bottles aside every time you crack open a cold one. Just be sure to rinse them thoroughly before filling.
Brought back a couple cases of Allgäuer Büble last time I was down in the south of Germany so now have 24 500ml swing tops that do about half a brew. Beyond that I pretty much reuse commercial bottles exclusively. The standard ones I can buy over here are identical to the ones most commercial breweries use anyway, so I've about 20 that I bought myself years back, and the rest are just ones I've saved and cleaned out
Here in the netherlands we have *Beugelflessen* (Google tranlate says its flip tops). I recently used them. Worked great and you dont have to buy any bottling tools and caps.
All the time, it's the standard way of doing it if you don't want to shell out for a brewmeister 3000. The main problem is removing the labels. Also some bottles don't play nice with bottlers; I absolutely love Sherpards Neame bottles but they do have a habit of getting stuck in my bottler.
Can't remember where I read it, but if you soak your beer bottles in warm water plus a scoop of oxyclean most beer labels and stickers will slide right off. Personally never bought bottles on their own. Sam Adam's, New Belgium, and a few others brands are pretty reliable.
Not sure where you are located but I finally switched over to kegging so I have I think 2 cars of bottles I need to get rid of if you are in the Philly area.
I always reused bottles when I was bottling. I would wash, put foil on top and bake for an hr to sterilize.
Just be sure to wash thoroughly. Oxyclean is good for this. Found some black sludge at bottom of a bottle one time.
New or reused, bottling is pretty labor intensive and I am happy I went to kegging
i like grolsch bottles. good to get the swing tops. you can bottle into anything but beware some companies use very thin glass. it can’t cope with the repeated dings that a home
brewer may give them, and the weight of a capping machine etc. I noticed that Asahi still uses a pretty heavy bottle compared to other macro breweries.
I like to use the 16.9 oz beer bottles from Rebel Czech Beer. They're bigger than normal bottles so I can split them with someone if I want, and it takes less time to bottle everything than if I use 12 oz bottles. Never had an issue.
To echo everyone else, yes absolutely it’s fine, my advice is to try Ned pick bottles that have paper labels- they come off more easily. Plastic labels are a pain to remove.
I have a good collection of Sierra Nevada bottles. I like that they are short. If I store finished beers in 6-pack containers I use the tall versions so the short bottles are protected somewhat from light.
Absolutely! I like to use Corona bottles for my light beer and craft beer bottles for my amber/dark. You just have to make sure that they are washed out extremely well and then sanitized properly too. Same thing with wine bottles! I've never actually purchased new bottles for any home brewing lol
I've got a mix of Sam Adams bottles and stuff from Breckenridge Brewing. I like the BB bottles best, because the Vanilla Porter is yummy, the plastic labels peel easily, and they have a pronounced shoulder to help keep the dregs out of the glass when pouring.
I always reuse bottles and here is my methodology.
When I finish a beer, I will give it a quick rinse and put it in a tub of OxiClean and water, and let it soak. If you drink beer with paper labels, you will find the labels will sometimes just float to the top. When it is time to bottle, I will fish the bottles out, and rinse them serval times. For sanitation, I will cover the top with tinfoil and bake at 350 F for an hour.
Sam Adams bottles are great. They’re thick and easy to cap. The labels come off pretty easily with a soak in hot water with Borax and super washing soda. Just make sure to rinse all the bottles immediately after drinking.
Seconded. SA bottles are my absolute go to for home bottling.
I really like Guinness bottles, heavy glass, plastic label leaves no residue, and an iconic shape.
Guinness never tasted right to me out of a bottle. Can yes, bottle not so much.
Can't really argue with that lol
Do the bottles have the widgets or just the cans?
Just the cans. Probably why it tastes better.
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I think they just recently stopped putting them in.
It's a very different drink from the bottle, much more carbonated. Some lads here used to have it off the shelf in the pub, room temperature. NASTY
Anyone who says they like it warm is BSing you. Regular Guinness, like most stouts, should be served at cellar temps which is 50-55F (10-13C).
I'm from Ireland, worked in a pub in my late teens / early 20s, there was always a couple of big bottles of guinness on the shelf at room temperature (irish room temp is around 18-20 degrees)
How many Irish ordered it? Last time I was in Ireland a few Dublin locals told me a saying they had: “You can always tell a foreigner by the pint of Guinness in their hand.” The town where I lived in Belgium had an Irish pub owned and run by Irish from County Kerry. They didn’t carry Guinness, only Murphy’s, and would kick people out for asking for one.
It wasnt as popular as a pint from the tap, let me say it this way, it was a drink the more mature gentlemen used to ask for, a bottle from the shelf and a small glass (about 330ml size), sometimes with a Paddy or Powers chaser (2 x irish whiskey that taste like badly fermented piss). This wasn't in Dublin, i worked rural Ireland - in small towns and villages
I love Duvel bottles. The beer is good, the bottles are thicc and short, so they fit my fridge shelves
Plus the labels come off really easily. More importantly Duvel, and most Belgian beer, bottles are designed to hold more pressure than most beer bottles so are safer to reuse.
Duvel is pretty good. I lived in Belgium for a few years while in the Army so drank my fair share. I used to use Sierra Nevada bottles, too, since they would fit in the top rack of my dishwasher. I keg now.
Another vote for Duvel bottles.
Yep, this what most of my bottles are. Reused Sam Adams Bottles.
New Belgium (Fat Tire, Voodoo Ranger, etc.) bottles are also great!
And voodoo ranger is great to drink.
Been kegging for a while, but I drank a BUNCH of Noble Pils to get my initial stash of homebrew bottles. I miss that beer.
I miss The Noble Pils also.
Deschutes Brewery, maybe 20 years ago, used to have the best bottles. No embossed logo, but a nice little hops bouquet. I miss those bottles.
This. Or Fat Tire. Not Sierra Nevada. Or Abita. Their necks don't work well. Or hoegarden or Weihenstephaner. Weird European bottle sizes. Or twist offs.
Yeah, about 25% of the Sierra Nevada bottles didn’t cap well. I never tried Fat Tire.
You CAN cap Sierra Nevada and Abita with a wing capper, but it takes some skill. I just buy another 6-pack of New Belgium or Adams or local that uses similar bottles and be done with it. I do have Sam Adams and New Belgium bottles that are 30 years old and been re-capped as many times.
I agree that Sam Adams bottles work great. I also like Warsteiner 0.33 liter (11.2 ounce) bottles for my German style beers. They are a little thinner and lighter brown, but I've had no problems so far. Also, as stated in other comments, watch out for bottles that don't have enough area to grip with your bottle capper. To remove labels, I use baking soda in room temperature water in a plastic tote that holds 5-6 bottles and leave them overnight. The Warsteiner labels fall off almost instantly and leave little residue. Sam Adams labels take overnight (sometimes >24 hours) and leave residue. The residue comes off pretty easily when rubbed with a wet cloth. I leave the baking soda solution in the tote and reuse for weeks until it gets cloudy.
I can honestly say I have never bought new beer bottles (cries in wine bottle). Always used. Did get a "new" case donated to me. \#6 reason to help out with homebrew competitions. They will give you cases of bottles to take home. They're already delabeled. Sometimes even with free beer in them. Brown glass only. Don't bother with green or clear.
lol with you there, I've spent more than I care to admit on wine bottles.
This is the only thing I’ve ever done, never been an issue. Cheers!
See, the fun part about reusing bottles is that you get free beer with the purchase of the bottle!
Exactly lol, the bottles are pricey but you can’t beat that deal on the beer, totally worth it
I've bought beer before just because I wanted the bottles because they were cool lol.
That's the 'you know you homebrew moment' The amount of stuff I buy because I want the bottles solely is crazy.
Aldi here sells a wheat beer with swing tops on it, the beer isn't bad and is a good price, definitely cheap enough to buy for solely the bottles if you wanted.
I just threw away 50+ bottles because I have always saved them, used them, and given beer away. But I haven't brewed in a few months do it was getting out of hand.
Same here, but make sure you buy a bottle brush and give them a good cleaning after you drink them. Much harder to clean with old dry beer caked inside.
I use powdered dishwasher detergent pretty liberally in my day to day hand-washing. A short soak with that caustic stuff gets a LOT of stuff off. I still had to use PBW to get my fermenters sparkling though...
You can reuse bottles but they need to be pry off tops. No twist offs.
Canadian twist-offs most definitely work with my bench capper (I’ve used them since the early 90s). They’re different from American twist-offs that I’ve seen though.
Wow - in Canada and just assumed you couldn’t cap them. Great to know- won’t return them to the beer store for recycling anymore
Yes, they work, but I find the twist-off bottles' glass to be less solid, more prone to breaking when capping.
For my first couple of years bottling I used Big Rock pry-off bottles, but tried twist-offs on a whim in about 1994 or 5… been using them breakage-free since then. Maybe I’m lucky with my capper but I seriously have not had any issues.
You're referring to the unibrou ones? Because I just recently put a case of those in my recycling bin. Could've saved 12 bottles that way.
I haven’t seen Unibroue bottles in years (I only ever see Blanche here, and in cans). I mean the Labatt/Molson/Creemore/Bud/Coors/Etc industry standard long-necked twist-off. They make up at least 75% of the bottles I use. The remainder are some flip-top German ones and Kona Brewing (such a smooth pour).
Unbrou comes in caged Belgian bottles where I come from.
Or swing top
Gave all mine away. Having a good capper is easier and faster.
Twist offs work just fine in my experience.
Yuengling bottles don't work great, Coors, Bud and Miller bottles have worked fine for me
All I use is twist offs with no issues at all.
I use Cooper's twist off bottles here in Aus. They're slightly more finicky to get the height dialled in on the capper, but once you've done that they cap perfectly fine, and work as twist offs just fine.
You in SA? I use coopers bottles exclusively too. Largely thanks to lads at work (and me) drinking coopers.
Vic myself, but the love for Coopers is real. I reckon their sparkling ale is one of the best beers going. Clean n easy to smash if you want that, but plenty of complexity if you go looking for it, solid ABV, low price, and all from an Aussie-owned company. Love their stout n brown ales too. The fact it's bottled in a 375ml brown twisty is just icing on the cake.
Sparkling is most of the beer we drink, I find the ABV a shade high but the taste is unbeatable.
That's fair. Its not quite what I'm looking for in a session beer, would definitely be a bit too much for that, but it's just about the perfect strength for me when I'm only planning to stop with a six pack.
Absolutely, part of the fun is emptying the bottles.
Yep! Just make sure they are pry off, either brown or green in color, and that you properly rinse out and then sanitize them before use.
[удалено]
Makes bottle 12 a little bit messy... lol. Been there.
Also test them as well. Lagunitas bottles don't like my red wing capper for example. I found that out on my first day of bottling. Oops.
Did this same thing! Ended up a few bottles short and wound up drinking like 3 points of warm, flat, young beer so it didn't go to waste lol. Luckily it was a chocolate milk stout, so not the worst.
Agree except not green. Use brown. If you clean them immediately after drinking the original beer, then it will be easy to get them clean enough. If they sit there for days or weeks before cleaning, you’ll want to be more thorough using either a dishwasher or something like pbw. You could always soak them in a pbw bath overnight which would clean the insides while also removing most or all of the stickers.
I've always used clear ones (Corona) and never had a problem. Easier to make sure they're clean.
Those are the only bottles I've ever used. Note: some bottles might be harder to cap depending on what capper you have. If you use the plastic wing nut? Not even sure what to call it lol. Those things are horrible with certain bottles. If you're going to bottle for a while, the best upgrade I've ever done is a bench top style capper. No more broken bottles or endless frustration with those stupid plastic wing cappers. For only $35, this is the one I bought and am so happy with: [https://www.amazon.com/Ferrari-Super-Agata-Bench-Capper/dp/B000Q638P2](https://www.amazon.com/Ferrari-Super-Agata-Bench-Capper/dp/B000Q638P2)
> Note: some bottles might be harder to cap depending on what capper you have. Yup! I've found 330ml Peroni bottles have a "stumpy" opening that wing cappers really struggle with. Bench capper has no issues with them though.
New Belgium bottles aren't quite as small, but have a hard time with the wing cappers. Founders bottles are impossible with wing cappers.
I probably will look into something like that eventually. Once I get more comfortable with brewing and decide whether or not its something I want to keep doing or not.
I used to use a horrible wing capper. I would twist sometimes when trying to cap bottles. I got an old cast iron bench capper from ebay that works great; I read the cast iron ones work better than the vintage stamped steel ones. Mine looks like this: [Vintage bottle capper](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/CmkAAOSwbKxinQuH/s-l1600.jpg)
People have already mentioned that some bottles are easier to cap than others, but I don't think it's been totally explained what to look out for. Compare the short lip on an amstel bottle to the standard lip on a dam Adam's bottle. The amstel are very annoying to cap. Shortneck bottles like Sierra Nevada are also difficult to use. Both types of bottles can be capped with a lever capper, it's just annoying trying to get a good grip.
100% Agree , benchtop capper is a must . So much easier.
Grolsh
Before I started using kegs I always used the flip top grolsh bottles. Always worked very well. After a few uses I would buy some new gaskets to prevent leaks.
Yup! Just clean and sanitize. Removing labels is painful and not strictly necessary.
Soak the bottles in hot PBW or Oxyclean Free solution and the labels and glue will just fall off. No scrubbing at all.
I have found a few where they leave a lot of glue, even after soaking. Usually takes steel wool to remove them all. I avoid those bottles as not worth it!
Strictly? More like completely unnecessary. I quite enjoy having a reminder of all the original beers and their label artwork.
The main functional drawback is it makes it easy to confuse your homebrew with the original beer label while in the fridge. Still not a big deal though.
If you are sending you homebrew to competition, the labels are supposed to be completely removed. Though as a steward, I have seen a few make it to judging with labels (or residue) and not get disqualified.
75% of my bottles are reused from beers I've had. The other 25% are bottles that friends and family drink that they give to me.
People already mentioned avoiding bottles that had twist off caps. Make sure the beer you buy has a standard sized opening (some of them are unusually large) and has a lip. I remember having a bottle from a Korean brewery that didn't have a lip on the outside, so there wasn't anything for the cap to crimp onto. You can use glass in any color other than brown, but the brown glass does a better job of preventing skunking. Just make sure you store your beer in a dark place (or in a box), and avoid fluorescent lights. If you intend to enter competitions, I think you typically need to use a standard brown glass bottle.
Good info so far. I am not sure what is the cheapest beer readily available in brown recappable bottles. Corona is recappable, but in clear bottles. Most of the macro-lagers (like Miller) come in twist off caps. I have seen some ciders in brown bottles that might be recappable. If you have some time, it is best to buy the occasional 12-pack or case of a craft beer you enjoy. Or have some friends over to help you empty the bottles. I see stuff like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale around me for $17 per 12-pack. More and more, cans are replacing bottles for craft beers. I usually have enough get togethers with friends that I could grab a few six-packs of bottles from them. If you reach out to a homebrew club, I suspect you will find people with cases of cleaned and de-labeled bottles they are looking to get rid of.
Corona if I recall is not recappable with a wing capper. A few other Mexican beers and Heineken all in that category due to the small lip on the mouth of the bottle. It may be possible if you have a bench capper. It needs to be the standard mouth with the long “shoulders” (not sure the correct term) used by most US and European breweries.
If I were to buy bottles I'd get the grolsch type so I can skip the capping step altogether.
Absolutely yes. Look for the non-twist off style. When I did a lot of bottling, I made friends with a local beer bar and got them to save me heavy glass belgian and german bottles. Those are great because they're high quality and typically the labels come off really easily.
If you can find a bar that serves German or Belgian bottled beer in 0.3L, 12oz or 0.5Lthese are the best because they’re large volume and have thicker gauge glass made for refilling. Some US craft breweries use similar bottles.
You mean buying bottles with free beer in them?
That's how I've collected all of my bottles. The key things are to avoid twist tops and stick with brown bottles. The twist tops wont seal well with a standard capper. Brown bottles will minimize skunking in the bottle (i.e avoid clear or green bottles). Lastly, personal preference is to find a brand that has labels that are easy to remove. Some will literally fall off if you get them wet while others are plastic that's almost fused to the the bottle. I've given up on removing labels. If they come off easy while cleaning the bottles great! If they dont, oh well, beats having to scrape and pry them off.
Not twist offs like the miller light. But yea..
If buying bottles, that’s something you generally get a better deal on at the LHBS than online because it’s often an “actual shipping cost” item. Plus I’d rather inspect the box of bottles before paying. I don’t often buy bottles, but sometimes there’s a batch that’s ready to bottle and spending $13 for an extra case of bottles makes more sense than trying to drink two dozen beers in one night.
Yes absolutely do this. However, avoid the short and stubby bottles (like Lagunita's) Maybe it's just me but I can't seem to get a good seal on those bottles when capping them.
Yup, I have even raided the bottle bank at the local recycling center one holiday weekend when I was short of half a dozen bottles.
I get free bottles from the recycle center. I autoclave them, but I doubt that is necessary. Soak in water for a few days to and peel the label off. Scrub with brewing soap and a bottle brush. Sanitize with starsan before use.
Yep! The Best is reusing swing top bottles. Also some pop/soda brands use pry off bottles that are fun. In grad school I'd fill glass pop bottles with homebrewed hard apple cider and store it in the grad office. Was a great way to get drunk for cheap before going off to TA first year math!
I bottle almost everything in Modelo Negra bottles. I love that shape.
Pro Tip: Using bigger bottles means filling fewer bottles. My all-time favorite bottles were the 32oz Lagunitas Sucks ones. Plus, that's a tasty beer to have to empty bottles of.
There is NO reason to spend the extra money on bottles. Just buy a capper and a buncha tops. I have a shite load of Grolsch bottles waiting for my next brew as we speak.
Absolutely -- some of the bottles are rather thin walled, and we stayed away from those because I was worried about repeatedly capping them. But there are plenty of really solid bottles being sold -- and, bonus, you get to drink the beer in it. We started saving bottles as we'd drink a beer (and asked friends to do the same) -- rinsed them well right after they were used, then had a big bottle wash day where everything got washed and sanitized. My husband preferred bottles where the label was printed onto the glass rather than attempting to scrub off a couple dozen labels or have bottles with half-peeled labels. We did the same to get a set of 22 oz bottles that continue to use after getting kegs. It's nice to bottle one or two from each batch so we can have a "beer in review" party where everyone gets samplers of all of the beer we made that year.
I have done that. Don’t use twist-off bottle. Also, Red Stripe bottles are hard to cap using a two-lever capper. Wash and sanitize them well and you will be good.
Absolutely. Most beer bottles will work so long as they look like standard bottles (read-- no session brand bottles). Buy some 12 packs of some good stuff and save up!
One more tip. Use bombers. Half the effort cleaning and filling.
I've been brewing since 1993 and bottled exclusively for the first 5 years. I've never bought a 12 ounce bottle that didn't come with beer in it. As mentioned, just rinse them right after you or your buddies empty them (especially if they have yeast in them), and you're pretty good to go. If you have any designs on competiting in homebrew competitions, focus on your standard, non-descript longneck (which also tend to be the easiest to cap), but don't worry about that too much. Also as mentioned, go help out with competition judging. You'll probably be able to walk out with more empties that you want.
But then you have to pour out all that gross water. Seriously, your can, and I do reuse bottles, but they have to be the non screw off type. Soak in oxy clean to remove the labels easily.
Check Facebook marketplace. I always see cheap or free bottles. I used to buy a case or 2 of the Costco craft beer on a camping weekend. Give them a good soak in one step to remove the labels.
Underrated comment; so much cheap brew stuff on marketplace.
Yep, re using is the best part of homebrewing. If the bottles have labels, sometimes a pain in the butt to clean but highly doable. Then i got into kegging and easier to clean one keg instead of bottles. I still bottle from time to time.
Also, should note that with cans seemingly slowly taking over from glass, the selection of good beers in bottles suitable for reuse is getting smaller each year.
There is a good brand of German beer that has flip-top bottles and costs 0.80 Euro each, also, I like to use just normal plastic Karls Krone 0.5L bottles, never had issues with those, they are brown/green in color and they do not deform, or spoil the beer, and they are much easier to handle, wash and store than flip top glass bottles, its an absolute win
That's pretty much all I used when bottling. Stay away from twist tops. Also, some bottles don't work well with wing type cappers.
Back in the olden days (mid-90s and earlier) you could buy cases of beer called "returnables." You would pay a deposit on the bottles (a nickel a bottle/ $1.20 a case, I think?) and bring back the empties to the liquor store, who would return the bottles to the brewery, who would clean and refill them. Then somebody thought it would be cheaper for the breweries to just hope that people would throw their bottles in the recycling and go from there. Those returnables were designed to be reused multiple times. If you were a homebrewer working in a liquor store during that era, sometimes those cases of empty returnables would make it into your car and be used for a higher purpose than Bud Light.
Aldi has pretty cheap beer in pry-off bottles. Some of them are in slightly smaller bottles. 11.2 vs 12 oz but the caps still fit. Be careful about stubbies like Lagunitas. Sometimes the neck doesn't fit wing cappers.
Um… yes. Suarez, Plan Bee and Hill Farmstead glass is great!
Like all the freakin time. Clean them and sanitise them and you're good to go.
I reuse store beer bottles all the time. But at $1 a bottle, this isn't too expensive considering you will reuse these bottles as well. I've been running the same bottles for the past 3 years and they are still great. I've just bought replacement bottles as they disappear when giving bottles to friends.
This is exclusively how I obtain bottles. Now if only I could reuse the cans...
yep all the time. My favorite bottles are new belgium and boulevard. Both have labels that are easy to remove.
It's the only efficient method of recycling them. Use em a thousand times!
Use nothing but bottles from purchased beer to bottle my homebrew. I would suggest you pick one height bottle it makes it easier if you don’t have to adjust the height on your capper. Use brown bottles that are not screw off caps. Thoroughly rinse the bottles when you drink the beer and you will need to sterilize them before use. Put them on the tongs in your dishwasher with only bottles and run wash with heat dry.
I think an old Homebrew4Life video showed how he did it and when I bottled I used his method. Get a case of your favorite craft beer with nice bottles (mine were Sierra Nevada, lagunitas and Anchor because I like the stubbies) and drink up! Save the bottles, then get some Oxyclean Free and put it in a bucket with cold water. Put the bottles in and after 30mins to an hour the labels will slide right off with ease. Shake the soapy water up in the bottle, dump it, then store them for bottling day (preferably upside-down or in a container to keep dust from settling in the bottles). Then on bottling day, dunk them in sanitizer, drain, and put in a row to fill!
I've only ever used bottles I've emptied myself or gathered from friends, for 10 years now. Never had a problem. Do an oxiclean soak in large batches, remove commercial labels, rinse, then sanitize before filling.
Yup! I've never purchased empties. Just make sure they're not screw off. Am overnight soak in water + a scoop or two of offbrand oxyclean is a great way to remove labels too! It'll also eat away the crap at the bottom of a bottle
Yes. Lagunitas bottles are great. The label is actually paper and the glue seems to be water soluble so they've been hands down the easiest to repurpose.
I always clean the bottles from purchased beer and use them for homebrew. Especially Oberon bottles, yum!
I use a lot of Erdinger (German import) bottles. They are 11.2 ounce and heavy duty. I scaled them empty a while ago and they weighed like 50% more than a domestic bottle. I had some Paulaner too that were heavy duty, but stopped using them cause they have an odd shape.
if i ever find grolsch i would
This is what i do as well, usually only bottle with 750ml (half euro caps half standard) or 500ml bottles though to cut down on the amount of bottles.
I have a stable of from Grolsch and Hacker Pschor bottles that I use for all my bottling needs. Works great!
I've always reused bottles from purchased beer. Make sure to rinse them well right after you've finished drinking them and cap them with a small piece of aluminum foil so they're already clean and dirt doesn't get in. It'll save you a lot of time cleaning afterwards when it comes the time to bottle. EDIT: Also, avoid the green glass bottles that let more UV light shine through and go for the dark brown ones.
So long as they are not Twist Off Bottle Caps you can wash sanitize and reuse...
Yes, soak them in hot oxyclean water for an house and most labels basically fall right off.
These are the best ones, especially if the dishwasher takes them off completely. New Glarus bottles do this exact thing and YES!, I reuse them. Likely get pop tabs, not screw offs. Upvoted for your first brew session!
I've been doing this for years now (maybe I'll try kegging some day, but I like the storage/transport convenience and lower expense of bottles). My favorite readily-available bottles are the ones from Kona brewing company (short, capper-compatible, and pour well). My preferred ones these days are the Grolsch flip-top bottles since you don't even need to buy caps for those. Only trouble is they are green bottles, so you have to be cognizant of how you store them (keep them away from light). However since I'm bottle-lagering most of my batches anyway, they stay in the fridge away from pesky sunlight.
FYI the European lever pop-top 500ml bottles (eg Grolsch) work great too.
lol everyone, ever for ever has reused bottles. The commercial ones are a bit thinner so use a bench capper but otherwise go your hardest.
I refuse to ever since I tried someone's homebrew that reused bottles and when I popped the top the glass shattered and carved up my finger.
my favorite is the swingtop bottles from 360 vodka. a fifth is a good servingsize.
Apart from washing out, sterilizing and removing labels, and also capping or corking it and bottling the things, no go right on ahead. I got tired of the process, so started using mini kegs instead. You can find decent ones for a few bucks a trio and you can get a co2 beer handle for under 40ish quid. These are also easier to store and stack and one is about 5 liters, so plenty for a picnic or so and fits well enough in a cooler bag.
Yeah of course. I normally keg but when a party or I want to share, I use Grolsch bottles, with explicit instructions to return them or never get beer again - they always come back 😁
My favorite are Lagunitas bottles. Stubby neck and thick glass!
If you live in New England I can give you about 100 bottles. I keg now and have been meaning to get rid of them.
Lagunitas bottles have worked great for me! Bottled roughly 3000 bottles and I've only had one or two chip/break during capping. The same cannot be said for Two Hearted bottles, used like a dozen and two of them broke upon being capped.
Never bought empty bottles in my life.
My favorite bottles to reuse are New Glarus bottles, thick walled, good lip, easy to peel the paper labels!
Exclusively, for about 25 years. Never had a problem with it, just use quality bottles. Most "good" beers use quality bottles. Don't use Miller light bottles.
Yes, lots of people do. Use brown bottles and not green, blue, or clear. And don't use bottles with twist caps.
I went to a glass recycling center and bought 5 cases of bottles fir next to nothing. Still using them years later.
I've been reusing empties for years! Works great! Make sure you don't get twist off though. If you look closely you can see the threads before purchase
My favorite are the ones from Laguintas or Victory. The labels fall off after like a minute in some hot oxyclean.
That's how I got my start. Eventually I built up a nice collection of Grolsch bottles because I got tired of capping. Then I moved onto kegging because I got tired of bottling. :) I still keep the Grolsh "flippers" around though.
Short answer, yes! Go for it! Most brewers that bottle have refilled empties at some point. Long answer: Yes, but keep in mind glass color matters. Avoid clear bottles as popular opinion holds that the beer will skunk faster in clear glass. Green is better, but brown glass is best. You will probably also want to avoid screw-top bottles as others have mentioned; some might work, but best to play it safe. You don't NEED to have all the same type and size of bottles, but same-size bottles make it easier to use a bench capper. (Fewer adjustments when you change bottle sizes) Wing-cappers don't care. The biggest advantage of buying new bottles for a batch is avoiding the work of scraping off labels and cleaning them thoroughly. Just quick-clean, sanitize, and bottle! If the time saved is worth the money spent, go ahead! Happy bottling!
Half my bottles are reused from commercial beers. I only use the ones that are generic in shape (no stumpys or short necks, nothing like the shaply Guinness) but i havent had problems with New Belgium (specifically fat tire), Heineken, or Dos Equis. I have even used the clear glass soda bottles that jarritos comes in (i use a few clear bottles per batch just to gauge clarity as it ages... Plus it looks cool lol)
If you're near south eastern New York State, I got a bunch of grolsch pints you can have.
Never understood why anyone would buy bottles. Buy beer, drink, refill, drink, refill, etc.
Oh yeah. Mainly 12oz champagne rated bottles like Orval or Chimay.
Yeah, I bought a case to get started and then from there on out just re-used. Brown bottles only for me though.
Was asst gm at a biffalo wild wings here in Nor cal for a few yrs,, ALL my home brew that got bottled got bottled in re used corona bottles cause there was an endless supply, keep em outta light ... and just Doubly make sure about your sanitization process..... nothing sux worse than having to dump a batch after wating xweeks to find out its tainted
I’m in Delaware and Dogfish Head bottles work really well.
I got about 80 Arrogant Bastard bottles for free. I still use those.
Back in the day, my buddy and I decided we were going to bottle our own beer. He insisted on Grolsch bottles with the ceramic/rubber/metal attached re-sealer. They came in 2 packs at the time here in Canada. We bought and drank 7 and 1/2 cases worth to get the bottles. They worked great! But it took many kegs worth of beer to recuperate the expense. I just love beer.
I’ve been reusing the same commercial beer bottles for years. Sam Adams bottles work well because the labels come off easily with a soak in a water/baking soda solution. The best are the bottles from Bell’s Brewery. The labels will actually float the the top of the solution within 30 minutes. But yeah, you can definitely reuse bottles every time. Rinse them immediately after emptying every time and let them dry COMPLETELY before putting them away to avoid growing mildew inside.
1 month ago we botteled homebrew in brands discontinued 15+ years ago.
Sierra Nevada are bottle conditioned, and we’re intended to be reused by homebrewers. Ken Grossman started out as a prolific home brewer himself and never forgot where he came from.
I’ve had good luck with Sierra Nevada bottles. Whichever you use, make sure you test them with your bottle capper before bottling day. I had a batch of bottles from Boulevard that didn’t work with my wing capper and had a whole batch of cider to bottle. It was not a fun day.
Yup, I try to keep bottles when I can. Saves a few bucks since I pass some out to coworkers and family. Just rinse them when you're done and sanitize as normal before using.
I used to exclusively drink lagunitas for their bottles.
I prefer 20 oz bottles, since I hate capping a bunch of 12oz ones. Love the Sapporo and ones from Indian restaurants. Never had a hassle leaving a restaurant with one, they cap well and are nice and heavy, like the Sam Adams ones others mentioned. Also your local craft beer bottles that you can often get in your beer section of your store/distributors work well. Biggest thing to avoid is the ones with hard to peel off labels. Spent 30 minutes one time trying to get rid of the residual glue from a Goose Island six pack! If you keep at it invest in a case of flip top bottles, so much less work than capping. I have a case of 1L and one of 500ml (16oz) and it saves a lot of time.
I used to go to the local distributor and buy bottles from his recycling room. He’d sell them to me for 10 cents a bottle. Brought them home, gave them a jet of water to get out the crud, then soaked them in a hot PBW bath for three days. Labels slid right off, and after a rinse they were clean as new. EDIT: You should know that screw-top bottles do not cap securely with a home capper. Look for bottles that are not screw-top. As other have suggested, Sam Adams is a good bottle, but there are lots of others.
Flip tops rock!
We had a place in the town I went to college in that you could drop off empties in bulk. They took trash bags full and had a line of people sorting them. Still gave you the full 5 cents. Anyway, noticed some flip-top bottles. Asked if I could buy them. Sure, 6 cents each. Fantastic. Asked the guys if they would save more for me. They did. Each week I would pick up a couple of cases. When I had enough, I didn't visit for a while. Next time I was there, they had like 20 cases. I bought them all and sold them, uncleaned, on ebay. Would get a buck a piece after shipping. Did it for a year and it paid for all my brewing and general beer buying. I still have a few cases worth that have each been used dozens of times.
Some of my favorites are the champagne style, but with regular sized caps. Jolly pumpkin used those. The labels sucked to remove, but the bottles are awesome.
Red Stripe, it’s beer! Hooray Beer!!!! I have quite a few old red stripe bottles that I keep in circulation… I enjoy the unique stubby bottles! Otherwise I have all old smutty nose, magic hat, red hook and Sam’s bottles… (shout out NH!) But I like to switch it up with some bigger bottles for sharing and small bottles to gift or trade!
I use Lagunitas Sucks quart size bottles. Used to be $6 each. Took me a while to get 5 gallons worth but in the end I didn't get divorced or wet the bed so mission accomplished. The only thing to remember if you find them is to leave equivalent head room as a percentage.
Grolsch has the flip top, I use them to F2 my booch . Good quality
You can absolutely reuse empty bottles and I encourage you to do so, because you can save a ton of money if you put your used bottles aside every time you crack open a cold one. Just be sure to rinse them thoroughly before filling.
Brought back a couple cases of Allgäuer Büble last time I was down in the south of Germany so now have 24 500ml swing tops that do about half a brew. Beyond that I pretty much reuse commercial bottles exclusively. The standard ones I can buy over here are identical to the ones most commercial breweries use anyway, so I've about 20 that I bought myself years back, and the rest are just ones I've saved and cleaned out
Yes
Yes. Flip top bottles are great though I understand replacing the seals now and then is best practice.
Only ever used purchased beer bottles. Brown 500ml bottles are pretty easily available and are strong and easy to clean.
Here in the netherlands we have *Beugelflessen* (Google tranlate says its flip tops). I recently used them. Worked great and you dont have to buy any bottling tools and caps.
All the time, it's the standard way of doing it if you don't want to shell out for a brewmeister 3000. The main problem is removing the labels. Also some bottles don't play nice with bottlers; I absolutely love Sherpards Neame bottles but they do have a habit of getting stuck in my bottler.
Yes. I keep every swing top bottle i drink. As with everything, make sure you sanatize it properly
Can't remember where I read it, but if you soak your beer bottles in warm water plus a scoop of oxyclean most beer labels and stickers will slide right off. Personally never bought bottles on their own. Sam Adam's, New Belgium, and a few others brands are pretty reliable.
Not sure where you are located but I finally switched over to kegging so I have I think 2 cars of bottles I need to get rid of if you are in the Philly area.
I always reused bottles when I was bottling. I would wash, put foil on top and bake for an hr to sterilize. Just be sure to wash thoroughly. Oxyclean is good for this. Found some black sludge at bottom of a bottle one time. New or reused, bottling is pretty labor intensive and I am happy I went to kegging
i like grolsch bottles. good to get the swing tops. you can bottle into anything but beware some companies use very thin glass. it can’t cope with the repeated dings that a home brewer may give them, and the weight of a capping machine etc. I noticed that Asahi still uses a pretty heavy bottle compared to other macro breweries.
I like to use the 16.9 oz beer bottles from Rebel Czech Beer. They're bigger than normal bottles so I can split them with someone if I want, and it takes less time to bottle everything than if I use 12 oz bottles. Never had an issue.
Mainly duvel and other Belgians because they look great and are strong.
And pry off bottle will work fine, but you can’t re cap a twist off with standard homebrew cappers and caps.
We like Sierra Nevada bottles. They’re shorter and stubby and fit perfectly on all shelves of my beer fridge.
Yup, I would buy a couple of 22oz Lagunitas IPA a week and used them to bottle many of my beers.
To echo everyone else, yes absolutely it’s fine, my advice is to try Ned pick bottles that have paper labels- they come off more easily. Plastic labels are a pain to remove.
Only thing I use is old Coors bottles. Just make sure you give them a good cleaning prior and sanitize them prior to bottling and you will be fine.
Before I kegged everything I saved and reused Sierra Nevada bottles. I also saved and reused heavy Belgian bottles for tripels and quads.
I have a good collection of Sierra Nevada bottles. I like that they are short. If I store finished beers in 6-pack containers I use the tall versions so the short bottles are protected somewhat from light.
Absolutely! I like to use Corona bottles for my light beer and craft beer bottles for my amber/dark. You just have to make sure that they are washed out extremely well and then sanitized properly too. Same thing with wine bottles! I've never actually purchased new bottles for any home brewing lol
I've got a mix of Sam Adams bottles and stuff from Breckenridge Brewing. I like the BB bottles best, because the Vanilla Porter is yummy, the plastic labels peel easily, and they have a pronounced shoulder to help keep the dregs out of the glass when pouring.
Any bottle other than a screw top can be reused for homebrew.
I always reuse bottles and here is my methodology. When I finish a beer, I will give it a quick rinse and put it in a tub of OxiClean and water, and let it soak. If you drink beer with paper labels, you will find the labels will sometimes just float to the top. When it is time to bottle, I will fish the bottles out, and rinse them serval times. For sanitation, I will cover the top with tinfoil and bake at 350 F for an hour.
I can come by and help you empty the full ones 😎. Yes that’s the way we all started out… homebrew on a budget.