640 ml bottles

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640 ml bottles

Postby halfdutch » Saturday Feb 12, 2011 10:48 pm

Hi,

I'm looking at buying some 640 ml crown top beer bottles from a packaging supplier but I can only buy 8 dozen at a time. I probably only need half that. Anybody want to buy some off me for cost price? About $1.10 a bottle new.

They are german style (ie. tall and thin) bottles made for beer.

Pickup only from Thornbury in Melbourne.
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Re: 640 ml bottles

Postby Oliver » Sunday Feb 13, 2011 5:08 pm

Thanks for the offer, halfdutch, but I've got 350-odd crown-seal Pickaxe bottles at my disposal :-)

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Re: 640 ml bottles

Postby halfdutch » Sunday Feb 13, 2011 7:47 pm

No worries Oliver. Just for my information though can you or anyone define what a pickaxe bottle is? I've heard the term knocked about a lot and if I search the net I get a lot of hits for people asking what pickaxe bottles are.

What size are your bottles? I like the idea of bottling at 640ml because it's a great size to pour 2 glasses of beer either for myself or if I feel like sharing. Or as a super stubbie.
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Re: 640 ml bottles

Postby big dave » Sunday Feb 13, 2011 7:53 pm

Hey again

Have a look around and see if you can find the 650's cheaper. I reckon I bought a box of 24 or so from a homebrew shop in Bendigo last year for less than a dollar each. (I have plenty of bottles at present. Cheers.)

You are right, they are a good size.

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Re: 640 ml bottles

Postby Oliver » Monday Feb 14, 2011 9:43 am

Hi again, Halfdutch.

Pickaxe bottles were returnable, crown-seal bottles used by South Australian breweries until, I think, the late 1990s. Coopers stopped using them first, followed by the Southwark/West End breweries. They came in 750ml and 375ml varieties at the time of their demise, although there were other sizes over the years.

They had a pickaxe embossed in the neck.

Pickaxe bottles were made by the South Australian Bottle Co-operative. Each state had an equivalent bottle. For instance the Victorian Bottle Company, and the company in Queensland that made the bottles with the XXXX man on the neck.

I promised long ago to post some pics of Pickaxe bottles, which I'll do. Shortly :-)

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Re: 640 ml bottles

Postby warra48 » Monday Feb 14, 2011 5:25 pm

The only modern currently available equivalents are, I think, the Coopers longnecks. Brilliant bottles, and probably the best available longnecks for homebrewers.

Some time ago I went to the trouble of weighing individual bottles to see how much glass was in each. I'm now going from memory as to my results:

The lightest were the current xxxx bottles, and I won't use them because they are just too light.
The current VB, Carlton, Tooheys bottles are OK, with about 20 to 30% more glass than the xxxx bottles. I use quite a lot of them, and find them good to use.
The best are the Coopers longnecks, with about 40 to 50% more glass than even the VB and Tooheys bottles. Best of all, the Coopers are genuine roll tops, not screwtops.

I don't know how the 650s compare. I do know that the 650s are produced purely to supply the homebrew market. The bottle manufacturers can't supply 750 mil bottles to HB shops, because the major breweries own the patterns etc etc on those bottles, and won't let them be used for anything other than their own requirements. Hence the 650s, which is not a commercially sold available size.

The Coopers bottles are designed to be used for refilling with homebrew but, of course, to get them, you first need to buy them filled with Coopers' product!
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