Sourcing bottles

[Oliver]

Hi all,

There are about a million posts about where to obtain bottles for brewing, so I thought I'd start a sticky on the subject.

Here are some ideas about where to obtain bottles that spring to my mind:

• Buy full bottles and drink the beer.
• Local sporting clubs.
• Buy new, empty bottles.
• Post a message on homebrewandbeer.com/forum asking for donations of bottles
• Get your mates to keep bottles for you after they've drunk the contents.
• Function centres.
• Pubs.
• Other community clubs (Geoff and I obtained the 500ml bottles for the Millennium Ale from the Czech Club here in Melbourne; we dropped off a few crates then collected them a couple of days later full of empty Kozel bottles).

You may be pleasantly surprised if you ask local sports club or function centre to keep some empty bottles aside for you.

Other ideas?

Cheers,

Oliver

[Bum]

I've read of guys who go bin-diving on rubbish night. Probably not an option if you don't like screwtops.

[Oliver]

Just thought of another one: recycling centres.

Cheers,

Oliver

[emnpaul]

Fellow home brewers who've switched to kegging their beer and want to make room in their garage.

[Oliver]

Freecycle. Every couple of weeks there are people giving away beer bottles. Just this week someone had a couple of Grolsch swingtops to give away in Melbourne.

Oliver

(Freecycle is also a good source of other brewing equipment, particularly fridges and freezers.)

[Guru]

I have actually started using champagne bottles as well as I some of the women I know drink a lot of this, so I have a free endless supply of these. I had to get a larger bell for my capper (cheap), and my local home brew shop gave me the caps for free as he had received heap of these due to a supplier mix up.

[emnpaul]

I didn't realise you could cap Champers bottles! is it as simple as getting a bigger bell and larger caps?

I'm thinking they would make a nice christmas present for those relatives of mine that don't have a Paulaner Octoberfest with 1 Litre stein put aside for them.

[Guru]

Yep, just bigger caps and bell. The smaller bell just screws out and the larger one screws in, very easy. The champers bottles do look quite good too.

[milliner1986]

I found buying 2 coopers longnecks after work every day adds up very quickly. Putting an ad on freecycle and gumtree is always good.

[Nedg188]

any south coast new south wales brewers looking for bottles the tip at Ulladulla has milk crates of longnecks for 3-4 dollars.

[RickyD]

hey
I just scored 250 name spirit bottles from a function centre manager I wld o paid 1.50 but he only wanted 50 c each what a bargain