Glass bottles - New v re-used

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MCJones87

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Jul 7, 2015
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Location
Reading, Berkshire
Hi All,

I had a look to see if this question had been asked previously but had no joy, so if it has then I apologise. I still consider myself pretty new to the home brewing world despite having been doing it for a good 9 months or so, and to date have had some decent successes with both bottling and pressure barrelling my brews. I wont go into the obvious time saving aspects of barrel v bottle when it comes to bottling day but I have wondered over the time saving opportunity of using new bottles v re-using old glass bottles. My experience has been that using new glass is guaranteed to save time as the cleaning and rinsing needed is just simply quicker - a decent long dip in a hot VWP solution in the bath, followed by a rinse in tap water for new glass v the need to scrub each bottle clean before sanitising when re-using old bottles. However, I did recently read an article around bottling that mentioned commercial micro breweries will almost exclusively use new glass bottles. The article then implied that while some breweries do use a liquid sanitiser, there are plenty that choose not to and will simply rinse new glass before decanting.

This seemed wrong to me so I thought I would throw it out into the community to see what others thought. I ma almost certain that there will be planet of folks out there saying not to bother buying glass bottles and to always re-use, providing there is a decent level of care taken to clean bottles as soon as they have been emptied. All well and good, unless you actually want to ensure that you have a batch that looks identical in the same bottle size and design... plus a friend of mine recently asked me to produce a batch of beers for him to use as wedding favours - another example of when using the same glass style is a necessity.

Thanks in advance for any input :grin:

MCJ
 
I don't scrub bottles, just rinse after pouring and wash with the washing up. You could get identical bottles by asking a bar. Cider bottles perhaps. Popular ciders or beers.
 
A lot of 330ml bottles seem to be for the most part identical. I replace all my 500ml PET bottles with 330ml glass free from my LHBS/microbrewery at the start of the year. 90% of them are Identical even though they came from lots of different breweries.

With regard to re-using bottles, I:

1)Rinse immediately after use
2) Then later when I've got 30.Clean with oxiclean
3) Put them in the oven for 40 mins to sanitise with heat
4) then on bottling day sanitise with starsan

Overkill I know. But I also know there clean and I've nuked anything horrid in them
 
My bottle stock is all old beer bottles. I rinse well after pouring, put them in the dishwasher with everything else then store them on a bottle tree until a squirt of starsan before re-using. So far no infections. Aesthetically there is a bit of variety in shapes and colours, and the really hard to shift labels that can withstand the dishwasher I just leave on there, but I would probably try and put together a smart set if needed for gifts or presentation.
 
I have often thought about this

I used to put my bottles in dish washer after a rinse and tehy came out fine but I was concerned about them getting a head killer on.. I have since gone to rinsing out with hot and cold water a brush sometimes and then sanitise on the day

Cannot say I have seen much difference
 
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