I tried to find older posts about this so I wouldn't add any unnecessary clutter to the forum, but only saw a couple of related posts.

Can you (should you) reuse commercial bottles? I read that they won't stand up to conditioning and that only returnables should be used, but they aren't available to me.

Is it a safe way to go? I'm on my third batch and can't keep buying new bottles.

PS I'm hooked on this hobby - I always want to have something ferementing and I just started in April.

I don't know if I understand quite right, but let me see if I can help you. Let us make things clear first. By returnable bottles we mean beer that you have to use a bottle openers or "church key" to open? By commercial bottles we mean twist top, ones that have a metal crown cap but it can be opened by twisting the top? And another stupid question, you do reuse the bottles after you finished drinking a batch of homebrew? You are right about the twist tops, although I have heard of somepeople using them, they can sometimes not seal right. Also they tend to let in air. I would go with pop top. Just a question, why are the pop top returnables not available? I always save mine from all the bought beer I drink, beers like smithwicks, bass, and Sam Adams. Although I am not sure if Sam Adams still uses the pop top bottles any more, but I think they still do. If you cant save enough by yourself, have your friends save some for you. They help you drink the beer, why not help you save the bottles? If you really need some bottles fast have a bunch of friends over for a party and tell them to bring beer, but remind them that the beer must have pop tops, and save the bottles. I have found however that you will more than likely need to tell them what beer is in the right type of bottles because non-brewer have a hard time telling the diffrence. I am sure that some other people have better ideas, but as for me short of buying enough bottles so that you can continue reusing the ones you have, i am out of ideas.

if you are using a bench capper you can use screw top bottles. I don't use them since I keg so I can't tell you for sure but thats what I have been told. Maybe you should switch to kegging.

Thanks Tex. Sorry I didn't really get specific enough and the word commercial is probably not the right choice of words.

That is what I meant - bottle opener style. I heard that they could burst when left in the bottles for a while, but I could be getting bad information. I'd love to reuse Sam Adams bottles but thought I couldn't.

Any bottle will break if you don't let it finish fermenting or you prime too heavy.

I've reused almost every type of commercial pop top bottle available locally. No problems! I did have a batch that were dangerous but that was due to a brain fart in adding priming sugar!

+1 for BB's comments!

I've reused Corona, Sam Adams, smithwicks, and several others I can't remember. I have about 200 bottles I don't use any more cause I keg. Come on over, I make you a good deal on about 3/4 of them.

Oh, you can reuse champagne bottles. The beer caps fit them just fine.

If you have a ''wing capper'' you could also run into problems with some bottles that are thinner glass- like hinnie bottles -I broke a few before i stopped saving those. I try to make
sure they are purdy heavy, thick glass bottles. If you have a bench capper you should'nt have
a probelm.

That's exactly why I got rid of my "wing capper". Having a couple of bottles break on you while you're pushing down, makes you realize that you should have spent that little extra money on a bench capper.

kirkt - In addition to re-using glass, I re-use 16 oz. plastic beer bottles (like you buy at the golf course) all the time, and even an occasional 1.5 L or 2 L plastic - those screw-tops seal up just fine. In fact, squeezing them will give you a good idea of how carbonation is proceeding. Sometimes, ya gotta get creative. My only failure in this area was a 1-gallon Sunny D jug (good thing it wasn't my favorite beer) . . .

welcome to the obsession . . .

2-liter soda bottles are great when you're bottling in that "need beer now" mode.never had a problem with them.
Good one jmo

Absolutely, 2 liter bottles are great. The lid seals seem to last forever and they're easy to fill. Plus, no capper required.

I go for the 3L bottles. They usually contain some cheap soda, but w few hot rinses fixes that problem. Just don't get root beer. Also they work with the Tap-A-Draft system which I have and still use on occasion. Of course they work well after a bad day at work when you need more than 12 oz

PS Sam Adams bottle work great

Just glass for me.

I've tried refilling 2 liter bottles, and they do seal relatively well. The disadvantage is that if you don't consume the entire 2 liters at once, what is left in the bottle will oxidize.

I've also tried the small 16-20 oz and 12 oz soda bottles. They also seal relatively well, but I've had cases of the beer oxidizing before opening. Supposedly, the plastic is an oxygen barrier, but my experience is different.

Also, the possibility that alcohols in the brew could dissolve the plastic is somewhat unsettling to me. The thought of drinking plastic just doesn't sit right with me. While I'm not a chemist, I do understand the soda bottle plastic is (probably) not dissolved by the ethanol. The problem is that yeast makes quite a few alcohol-related compounds, and I'm not sure the plastic will stand up to every one of them. I'm sure it's fine for soda, but I have my reservations about bottling beer in plastic.

I used to cap the 24oz Shiner commercial bottles. With brand new caps and my wing-capper they seal 95% of the time. Since I find a 5% failure rate unacceptable I am phasing them out. Good for still wine though. With regular bottles I'll even reuse old caps if I need to. Never had a problem-= not once. However, since new caps are so gosh darn cheap I try not to reuse old caps. Just throwing that out there for those of us who find that a viable option.

Another thing to watch... foil covered necks. Because of the foil a wing-capper sometimes is unable to grip properly so scrape the foil off.

Other than that, I have found twisties to be strong bottles even though they seem thinner and lighter than regular bottles.

One note I didn't see: A soak in HOT soapy water will remove most labels. An ammonia bath will remove pretty much all labels. They will just fall off and collect at the bottom of the sink. The most you have to do is wipe with a scrubby to get the last bit of glue residue off, but there is no scraping or scrubbing.

I generally soak my bottles in ammonia after each use. It will get them very clean even if you "forgot" to rinse them and they have nasty dried residue in the bottom. Ammonia seems to render any sticky thing unsticky, if that is a word.

The ammonia does leave a slight residue, which you will see as a whitish haze and gritty feeling on the surface of the bottle. I will dunk the bottles in a bucket of warm water and run a bottle brush through them after. I then dunk them in a bottle of warm rinse water and put them on my bottle tree to dry. I might experiment with weaker solutions to see if I can get away with a single warm water rinse.

All this may not be necesary, but sometimes I have guests that set bottles down without even rinsing them (OK, I do it too) so I feel that I have no choice but to thouroughly wash them each time. I have used dishsoap, but I am afraid that any dishsoap residue would be bad for head retention, not to mention the fact that it is hard to find a detergent that is unscented.

If anyone has better bottle wahing practice, I would be happy to hear it.

I use a PBW soak to remove the labels off of new bottles and to clean up any gunky ones. I prefer to avoid cleaning gunky bottles though by rinsing them after use and covering them with a bit of aluminum foil. That way all I need to do is sanitize before bottling.

ammonia flavoring....I use star san and a good soak..then into the dishwasher right before bottling...have had no troubles....but start kegging, it is the only way to go!!

kirkt, all the info here is pretty spot on. I would only add that oxyclean is a gereat way to clean bottles of gunk and their labels as well! You can find a cheaper version of oxyclean at most dollar stores (awesome clean I think) which works fine as well, although a longer soaking time might be needed. Make sure you rinse the bottles out to get the oxyclean residue off and out of the bottles before you sanitize and fill.

Mark

Have never had problem with ammonia causing a flavor or odor...Has anyone else?

I've used twist-top wine bottles with good results.
I remember having a gusher with one, so I can say that one sealed properly.

I collect the 500ml bottles for normal use.

Same as Coctyle, I've had good luck using ammonia to remove labels. Just fill a big plastic tub with cold water and a bit of unscented ammonia, let the bottles soak overnight then the labels are very easy to remove. If you let the bottles soak for a few days, most of the labels fall off by themselves. The ammonia removes the adhesive so, if you like to collect labels, you can dry the detached label for a nice specimen.

I only use ammonia to remove labels, then use something else -- usually iodophor -- to sterilize before bottling. Never had any problems with ammonia flavor or aroma.

Negra Modelo bottles are my favorite, aside from the standard 22oz'ers. Wychwood Hobgoblin comes in a really cool bottle, perfect for strong holiday beers.

Has anyone seen the Budweiser Olympic tribute bottles? I want to get my hands on a few, and keep a few for display purposes; they look pretty cool. I can't seem to find one online anywhere, but it's basically a grolsch-topped brown wine bottle.