homebrewandbeer.com

I would like to start a bit of a discussion about what sorts of bottles you use, how you clean them and where you store your beer.

Do you guys use clear bottles such as carlton cold or boags st george?

i don't but this is only because i am scared of the unknown.

How do you clean your bottles?

i soak them in hot water to get rid of the dregs and the labels. i then soak them in stericlean for a while to give them a good clean and to get rid of the glue that the label leaves behind on the bottle. i then rinse them dry them and just before i use then i steralise them with a no rinse steraliser.

Where do you store your beer after it is carbonated?

i am currently storing mine in the cupboard in my room but it is running out of space so i was wondering if i could store it in the roof or would it get too hot up there?

also how hot does it need to be to carbonate your beer, is 16 degrees too cold and should it be lower for a lager?

My son needed some bookshelves for his books, so I picked up some second-hand shelves for free and put my beer on them instead. They are in the garage, with each shelf labelled with it's particular vintage.

My son's books are on the floor, so I could really do with some more bookshelves.....

melbourne man wrote: Do you guys use clear bottles such as carlton cold or boags st george?

I use whatever I can find, including the above. Up to 700 or 800 now, so slowly phasing out some of the less pleasant clear bottles (Tooheys Extra Dry, St George, Corona and their unremovable labels) in favour of my preferred Bundaberg Ginger Beer bottles, which now number at least 300.

How do you clean your bottles?

As I drink them, in with the dishes to remove the labels as well. For a large batch at once, in a tub of warm water with a small amount of detergent. Sterilise with whatever I have right before bottling.

Where do you store your beer after it is carbonated?

i am currently storing mine in the cupboard in my room but it is running out of space so i was wondering if i could store it in the roof or would it get too hot up there?

Wherever I can find room - I have a good 12-15 cases worth of beer stored and in various stages of aging and consumption. Most of it is in the shed, in boxes or in my beer fridge. A few cases are inside the house, in the Rumpas/Brewery Room, underneath the billiard table or in the corner.

also how hot does it need to be to carbonate your beer, is 16 degrees too cold and should it be lower for a lager?

Room temperature for all my brews including lagers, as even in winter the ambient in the brew room rarely dips below 16*C. Takes a touch longer for the ales that way, but its better than burning money by turning on the wall heater.

Use? I use mostly browns and greens.
I store them in the back shed where the brewing is done. The 'vintages' are stored in a filing cabinet. I put away 3 from each brew and don't touch them.
Cleaning? I use a little washing liquid and a little bleach in hot water. I'm not fussed about labels so if they don't come of straight away, they stay there.

I generally use the Coopers PET bottles - in terms of bottling they make it easy. I have a couple of dozen various sized roll tops.

Cleaning - rinse after emptying with hot water and another rinse with hot water just before bottling. I don't use any sanitiser on my gear anymore and I don't have any infection issues so why waste time and money?

I store my brews under the house on one of those galvanised shelves you see in Bunnings. They hold a batch on each shelf so that works quite nicely and the kids are too scared to under there so they stay away from it.

I have a couple of hundred or so crown seal longnecks. Brown ones only.

Tell me, many of them have 1956, or 1957 on them. Does that mean they were made on those years? They are pretty old, you can tell but they are perfect condition.

I also have about 100-150 crown lager bottles, and I bottle about 25% of each batch to them, for taking along to BBQs, or any time a longneck looks like a drunk.

When I empty each bottle it is straight away rinsed thoroughly with cold water, and hung on the bottle tree to dry. Then stored in copy paper boxes until needed. The copy paper boxes are how I store my beer, in the garage. Each box holds 9 longnecks, in the dark, and on shelving in the garage.

I use Iodophor for sanitising, which is very economical. Have a bottle rinser, and it needs only one litre with 1ml of Iodophor to sanitise bottles.

I use a mix of Coopers PET bottles, long knecks and stubbies. A handful are clear or green.

Increasingly I like the plastic bottles. I store them in a box with the lids on, then move the box to the fermenter for filling - stops them toppling over. And so easy to cap. Haven't had any split and I've used some them six-times over now. They will definately split if your primary fermentation isn't complete. I usually use Coopers sugar drops but occasionally dextrose for secondary fermentation. Plastic bottles are cheap to buy, too, and I defy anyone to notice a flavour difference with glass.

I'm with Terry. I wash them after use and reuse them without sterilizing. Never had a problem after 290 brews - and if I did I figure its cheaper to throw an infected bottle away than wash all those bloody bottles!

I put my brews in a plastic crate lined with a short electric blanket (designed for kids or caravan use), bring it up to 20-odd dgrees for five days or so. Then I store them in the dark in a cupboard.

My entire collection of a few hundred bottles are Pickaxe longnecks (the old crown seal bottles from SA). Full ones are kept in my beer cupboard, which unfortunately lives in the shed. Empties are stacked in boxes next to the beer cupboard.

Cheers,

Oliver

Mixture of Pet, screw tops and long neck crown seals as well as stubbies.
I rinse them when I'm finished and hang them upside down in a rack till their dry and bottle again, sterilising, not here never had a dud one yet and saved heaps.

Phantom

As far as bottles go, I only use twist top brown longnecks, Couldn't stand washing stacks of stubbies all the time and I reckon if I'm going to have a beer, I'll have a longneck. I use a bench capper and reckon its the best thing short of kegging.

I wouldn't use clear bottles, Light is one of beers natural predators.

When I get new bottles, they aren't often clean, so cleaning is done by rinsing with hot water, then soaking, full, overnight in a hot bath. I then get the bottle brush into them when the water is cold so it doesn't wreck my bristles. The labels come off no worries.
Once they are clean, I put them on the bottle tree, when dry, I store them in an old fridge on its back in the shed to keep the dust off them.
I sanitize prior to use atm but am thinking it might be unneccessary

Storage of beer once it is carbonated is taken care of by two beer fridges in the shed, any that don't fit go in cardboard boxes to keep the light out.

I strongly urge you not to put your beer in the roof. Have you ever worked in a roof during a hot day? It gets stinking hot.

what will the light do to the beer in the clear bottles?

i think it kills off the yeast thereby stopping carbonation

It's worse than that, beer stored in clear bottles can become "light struck", meaning they have a foxy smell to them.
Amber bottles are the only way to cut out the wavelength of light that causes the problem.
Check out this link.
http://www.solve.csiro.au/0205/article11.htm

I confess to being a bit obsessive about bottles. Partly it's because I brew for the craft rather than as a way to have cheap booze: I don't drink enough myself to need the economy; as it is I often need friends to help me get through my homebrew. Noone seems to mind too much.

To me, an important part of the process is the appearence of the bottle and the label. With some brews, I like to keep with the style, so my Cerveza, I bottle in old corona and sol bottles, eurolagers in green glass, and so on. However, some brews I pick a style that strikes me as interesting.

The vaguely belgian brew I've just started drinking is almost all bottled in clear 200ml San Pellgrino chinotto bottles, and the pilsner I'm currently brewing I plan to put in light green 500ml San Pellgrino bottles.

As well as the usual stubbies and longnecks, I also use an assortment of UK 500ml bottles I've collected (Theakstons, Fullers, Spitfire, Speckled Hen, etc, etc), and I'm slowly accumulating a fine collection of Grolsch swing-tops which are great for quick and easy bottling! Oh, and I have 2 2.25L Darwin Stubbies, which would have to be the closest thing to kegging that you get with glass.

For labels, I print onto DL24 (A4 in 8 rows of 3 labels) labels from Word. I usually put a background image watermark across the page so every label is different.

cheers,
Tom

Wow, that is taking it to another level. My labelling is done on the bottle cap with a fine permanent marker and a steady hand so I don't have to try and remove old labels.

I must say i am only new to brewing and i've only used coopers PET bottles. One advantage of the PET is the carelessness or lack of that is needed. Guaranteed not to break.

Twist tops are my favourite and I store them in broccoli containers. They hold around 28 bottles so two containers to a brew and they stack beautifully.