I have been saving my beer bottles and now have a fairly decent amount, say about 50 to 75. I know that isn’t much for you pro’s, but for me it isn’t bad. LOL. I am thinking of bottling and kegging batches so I have different stuff available, so the bottles are going to be used in 5 gallon batches. My question, once the bottle has been drunk, rinsed and somewhat dried, what do you all do to store them? Right now, they are sitting in my shed in six pack and 12 pack containers. I always clean and sanitize them before use, so I don’t think this is a bad way to do it, but wanted to get the pro’s opinions.
I have an enormous bin where I just toss them in after they’ve been well rinsed. I must have probably 300-400 bottles or something like that, maybe even more, most of them without labels. Anytime I drink one of my bottled homebrews, I immediately rinse the bottle in warm water about 3 or 4 times so it’s relatively clean in the bin. Then on bottling day, I do the fancy sanitization job. I figure this is better than sanitizing them right away then leaving them to the elements for several months or years before they get filled again.
I rinse the heck out of each bottle after emptying it. Then give it a wash at dish washing time and rinse the double heck out of it. Then it goes into a better bottle rack and gets sanitized right before bottling.
I pretty much do the same thing as Dave does. Although on bottling day, I clean them thoroughly with a dairy cleaning product, rinse them and put them, in a bucket of sanitizer where they sit while I set up my bottling process. The get emptied of sanitizer and immediately filled with beer and capped (the caps sit in sanitizer until I use them). I have maybe 125-150 bottles here that I only use for competitions or when taking beer to Florida where we go for a few months each year.
Quick note on used bottles — I have noticed that the labels from bottles that come from Germany come off very easily. Soak in water for 15 minutes and they literally fall right off. I heard this is because they recycle their bottles back to the brewery so the labels need to be easily removed.
Indeed, the Germans’ labels generally seem to come off a little easier than others. To remove labels, I give the bottles a ~30 minute soak in hot water, then if necessary I use the blunt handle end of a spoon to scrape them and re-soak if necessary, applying a brush to remove excess glue if necessary. For the most part (99%), those days are behind me now, as I’ve got so many labelless bottles now which I reuse over and over again. Now when I buy commercial beers, I don’t keep the bottles, just straight into the recycle bin. Yay me.
yeah, i ended up making german 500mls and belgian tall 330mls my standard. i had a bunch of the cool looking stubby 330 belgians, but they take up more horizontal space, so it was annoying to store them. theyre also presumably strong enough to hold higher carbonation levels since mine were mostly weizens/belgians
i only bottle still after all this time so know a fair bit about them.
please read redrocker: check to make sure the bottles are usable before spending effort/time saving and cleaning them.
some polish/euro bottles have a weird cap size that doesn’t seem to work on my emily capper/caps
some (czech for one) have a double lip that prevents my emily capper from properly sealing with caps
twistoff bottles may work, but the seal wont be very tight IMHO
it was annoying when i had delabelled and sanitized a bunch of bottles and found they didnt work, let alone when they have beer in the bottle.
Great info, thank you for posting. Most, if not all, my bottles so far are Racer 5. I found the labels come off very easy, and it is nice having them all the same size and shape. So far so good. I bought a box of 24 from Amazon as well, just to have. Thanks again. RR
I used to keep boxes back in my bottling only days which comprised like the first nine years of brewing. I purged most of my bottles when I moved states and started kegging. For now my bottles hang out on shelves in my brewing storage. If I ever pair down my beer cellar I’ll move the empties into boxes in the space where bottled beer is cellared so brewing storage is less cluttered.
I recently passed 11,000 bottles filled and capped, so my process is about as fine-tuned & efficient as I can possibly make it. Immediately after pouring bottles get a dump and rinse, 2nd rinse & scrub with a bottle brush, 3rd rinse and left in the dish rack to dry overnight. Once dry they’re put upside down in a case box to keep dust out, when the case is full plastic wrap over the bottles, case taped shut and stored in the ready area. Without counting I’m guessing I have somewhere around 35 to 40 cases of bottles, at the moment most are full, in fact I had to resort to using old twist top Coors bottles when I bottled yesterday as I didn’t have enough of any one type of bottle to do the batch. One thing I won’t do unless forced to by circumstances, is use more than one type of bottle per batch, makes filling and capping way too much of a bitch.
do you ever have issues of hard to remove yeast/mineral deposits in the bottles? i have been checking mine over and using PBW/alk wash on ones where i see problems and it removes the little built up yeast(?) deposits which seem to occur more with some yeasts than others.
and for everyone, yes i do and always have done a good 3x swirl and washout with good amount of hot water after i pour a beer. i think i had one yeast or brew that left a lot of these “stains” a few months ago and didn’t really diagnose it at the time. might have been WLP550.
i currently have created enough 500ml/568ml bottles to cover 2 full brews (18Lx2 - ~36L), then i tend to do a higher gravity brew in .33L bottles, of which i have about 24 litres, trying to leave some lie/eliminate excess of the .330s.
my process is:
wash out bottles after pour, store upright (i dont want to chip the mouths/i wash them out thoroughly later) in boxes
organize enough bottles to cover a bottling day for intended beer.
scan bottles to see if any have those scum/yeast/debris stains the water did not remove
set aside ones that do have this issue and PBW them for a few hours.
rinse them out and use iodophor to sanitize all bottles needed. let them settle/drip out.
spray a sheet of tinfoil with iodophor and cover the tops with a small wrap of sanitized tinfoil.
put them back in the boxes and use within max 3 days to bottle the beer.
maybe kinda wasteful but i like to break up the bottle management session from bottling day so its not a 3 hour event.
i have a homemade bottling wand type thing i made with a ~5 inch length of tubing with a lead-free plumbing line handle-tap in the middle to turn it on or off.off
All great info. My process as of now is: Rinse the bottle after pour at least twice. Store upside down in cardboard boxes or six pack holders. Day of, or a day before, run the bottles in the sanitizing mode in the dishwasher, then put on the counter and get ready for bottling. All caps go into a bowl of Starsan and the bottling wand and all hoses get a go around with starsan and then we are off the the races. Each bottle is given a carb drop and bottle is placed on the lid of the open dishwasher so any spillage is not an issue, and I put the bucket on the counter so gravity fills them. Bottle about 5 or so at a time. Store in the closet for a few weeks, and then crack open and see what I got. I have only bottles 3 batches so far, but none have had any issues with leaks or over carbonation using the carb drops I got from my local Morebeer. I am hoping the rain stays away so I can brew two more 5 gallon batches. One for bottling and one in the keg. Then, I start trying different styles. Sierra Nevada Pale ale similar is going to be my next try I think.
If you have access to empty copier paper boxes, they hold 32 12-oz. bottles nicely, and they have covers so they keep out dust and they stack. My wife collects them from work.
I’ve tried many methods of bottle cleaning. I was never completely satisfied until I tried a Papazian method. He wrote about cleaning carboys with 2 oz bleach in 5 gallons of water, with an overnight soak. I use this bleach concentration, but scaled down for just the bottles I am cleaning (one session of beer bottles) - still an overnight soak. Hot water rinse the next day with a jet washer. It cleans better than anything else I’ve tried - spotless and no film. Then on bottling day, I spray one bottle with star san using a vinator, while I’m filling the previous bottle - very little extra time involved. For the star san, I give it 30 seconds contact time plus a safety factor - that is what the inventor, Charlie Talley stated is required.