I will be doing some bottle-conditioning soon. Is there any reason I should not use regular pry-off bottles? That is bottles that are not the returnable kind.
Does anyone have any special preference between pry-off or swing-top closures for bottle-conditioned beer?
I use both swing-tops and regular pry-offs. Both work equally well. More important than the closure type is probably the color of the glass. Brown does the best job of keeping out the light that can skunk beer.
If you’re buying new bottles and can afford the swing tops they’re the way to go IMHO. And they pay for themselves after only 24 batches!
I prefer drinking drinking some grolsch and getting the added benefit of having the bottles 
As long as they’re not screw tops they’ll work fine.
When I bottle (which fortunately isn’t all that often), I’ll put some beers in swing-top bottles.
But you also might want to put a couple in plain brown 12-oz longnecks for competition entries.
Meh. I don’t like Grolsch enough to consider it worth the premium over the empties. (It’s about $10 for a four-pack here.) Plus they’re green.
Anyone know of a commercial beer that comes in brown swing-tops?
Eh, it’s decent enough (and a little cheaper here) that I get the occasional four pack to add to my collection of swig tops. I haven’t seen anything at all other than Grolsch with the swig tops. If I could find a good beer in brown swig tops I’d be all over that but I wasn’t planning on sunning my brews anyway.
There is a beer in brown swing tops in my local store, but it costs 3 or 4 bucks a bottle… so I stick to buying plain pry off browns from them for 5 cents each.
Most of my 80 500ml brown swing-tops are either Monschof Schwarzbier or Schwelmer Alt, Pils, or Hefe all of which I’ve gotten locally. I also have 32 500ml brown “fattie” swing-tops (shorter and fatter) that I got from a friend of my brothers. I’ve not seen that style commercially (I think they’re really old). Also have 32 Grolsch but, like someone else said, they’re green.
I have been having trouble finding commercial swing-tops. I will have to keep an eye out for the Monschof Schwarzbier and Schwelmer
Fischer d’Alscace comes in Brown Fatties. Or at least it used to.
Also, just keep a lookout for German imports or sometimes some special release beers.
I have 3 1-L swingtops that came from Teton Brewing. Great for filling right out of a keg and bringing to homebrew club meetings, etc.
Funny you should mention Fischer. That is the one and only swing top I happen to have.
To answer the original question, there is no reason you cannot re-use pry-off bottles. I have been using those and also the crown type that are a twist-off cap, too. I have never, ever, had a problem with either type. Sometimes the screwoff bottles will feel different when you crimp down the cap with your capper, but they seal perfectly.
Don’t let anyone tell you that regular nonreturnable bottles are not good enough.