bottle question

[hail_to_the_ale]

Having brewed on & off for years & not ever bottled my ale, I thought it was about time to give it a go. My question is can I use bottles saved from commercial beers I've sampled over the past few weeks or do I need to buy new bottles ?

Cheers in advance brewers

[Garth]

As long as they are brown, have a decent neck on them for the capper and are the thicker type of glass (not Bud etc) they will be fine, rinse and sterilise them first.

[MightyMouth]

You can use some but some are too thin. Most older ones are ok.

[hail_to_the_ale]

Cheers for that, I'll take a look through the recycling drawer before the council collect tomorrow lol

[OldSpeckledBadger]

All mine are no more than a year old and clear rather than brown (mostly Old Speckled Hen and Tanglefoot). I simply store the beer in the dark to avoid light strike.

[dave-o]

The green ones are fine too IMO as long as you're storing in a dark-ish place. And there's a lot of them about, what with the latest craze for cider/pear cider.

But look out, it's a downward spiral - one day you will realise how much nicer beer is out of a bottle, next you'll be deciding that all your beer should be bottled, and finally you'll find yourself eyeing up everyone's recycle bins as you pass them on your way to work. I speak from personal experience - i found four London Pride bottles in a recycle bin on the station road this morning - today was a good day! No, i'm not proud.

[Stonechat]

Fullers bottles tick all the right boxes: made out of brown glass; made strong enough to hold bottle conditioned beer; labels soak off easily; they take a crown cap without having to use a bench capper and the beer inside tastes good right through the range from London Pride to Vintage Ale.

[Capped]

I have never bought an empty beer bottle ! I've got about two dozen still in use which originally held John Smith's Pale Ale which my ol' man used to stagger home from the WMC with,and they're about 28 years old and still going strong. All the rest I've acquired 'along the way',a real mish-mash but I've encountered very,very few that can't be re-used. Those JSPA ones are the best though - the shape means that you can pour the entire contents right from the first tilt of the bottle without getting any 'glugging' through the neck which could conceivably disturb the sediment. They'll see me out,I'm quite sure of that!