I’m thinking about making my own beer. I’ve been to a few beer making related sites but haven’t found a good answer.
I’m able to get used bottles from where i work unfortunately most are twist off. Can I use twist off bottles for my beer?
Not very well. I occasionally mix up a twist off bottle when I’m bottling and the cap usually doesn’t set right. I would not recommend twist offs.
yes but non-twisties are preferred.
I don’t know if other very experienced people will come here and say “NO DON"T DO IT.” but I have done it with no problem.
Relax; have a homebrew.
As mentioned, twist-off bottles often don’t seal well. Plus, they tend to be made with thinner walls - hand capping them could be hazardous, especially while you are inexperienced, because you may break the bottle while trying to cap it.
Sam Adams bottles are pretty solid for handcapping; I have other local microbrew favorites for adding to my bottle collection, but YMMV.
If you’re not planning to give your beer away (or if you have friends who can be relied upon to return the bottles), you could invest in clip top bottles (or beg some from a Grolsch drinker) - do you have a source for those?
Never have used them. With all the time and effort to get the beer to the capping stage, I didn’t want to try the twist-offs. I would buy quarts of beer (that weren’t twist-off) at the store. They worked great. Off course you had to empty them first, which was a bonus! Good luck.
I’ll join in with the “you can, but it’s less than ideal” answers. I stopped making a while back - I found that I prefered my beer still and I would just pour it directly out of the carboy. That’s also less than ideal, especially if you like your beer carbonated and at non-ambient temperatures.
You need to find bottles that are designed to be refilled. The Latin soda brand Jarritos comes in just such bottles (or used to). Stock up on tamarind soda with real cane sugar, then fill your bottles.
I’ve used a few twistoff bottles when I ran out of the others. Results were mixed.
The thinner walled twist off bottles break occasionally in my floor capper, and the seals from hand capping have been hit or miss for me (about 1 out of 12 would be flat).
I prefer to bottle half my batch in some large 2 L flip top heavy glass jugs (cannonballs) and the other half goes into Guinness bottles, Red Stripe bottles, or an assortment of other bottles I have. I like the Guinness and Red Stripe bottles because they don’t have paper labels to scrape off.
Also, if you can spare an extra $10 a batch, look at http://www.bottlemark.com for a fairly cheap neat custom cap option.
Moved to Cafe Society.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Basically most of the twist-offs will seal adequately, but you’ll lose a few to bad seals. Plus, they’ll be more prone to having that seal broken in storage and/or through handling, since the commercial crimps are actually into the “threads” of the bottle, while yours will be sitting on top.
If I was looking for the most cost-effective way to bottle a batch of beer, I’d set about drinking 40 or so pint-size bomber bottles of beer. They’re almost universally not screw-top, and you need fewer of them to bottle a batch of beer. They also seem to be made of stouter stuff than 12 oz non-twist off bottles.
Plus, you get to drink the beer in the bottles, which is frequently better than the garden-variety stuff in 12 oz bottles.
When I brew beer for camping/road trips/big parties, I bottle in 2 liter soda bottles. The caps have lots of threads and seal well.
Easy to transport large quantities for sharing, and you can toss the bottle in the trash and not have to haul a bunch of glass home. The only drawback is sometimes they don’t carbonate as vigorous as the smaller bottles.
The summary of the above waffling is: No, you can’t. Don’t do it. If you are bottling your beer, use standard crown caps and returnable bottles. Full stop.
Once you are experienced, then you can play around with 2 liter bottles, bail-top bottles and the like. But if you’ve never done it before, stick to crown caps and good brown bottles.
By the time your beer has been boiled, cooled and fermented…why take a chance?
It might work. It might not. I’ve crimped the caps on many beer bottles, none of them twist-offs. Try it, that’s the only way to know, but I wouldn’t do it.
Good luck!
Go Beer!!
Go with the crown caps.
BTW, silenus, I made a variant of your Shelley’s with a lot of substitutions based on what I could get locally (I had to sub amber for the special roast, Coopers Irish and Coopers Dark malt for the extracts, and Cluster for the Pride hops) - nevertheless, it was yummy. All gone now. ETA I made the sweet variant, BTW.
I’m trying an English Amber ale next. I think I’m switching to 1 gallon carboy brews, though.
My brother sometimes uses screw top bottles, and usually gets away with it, but sometimes doesn’t. Sometimes he gets a flat beer out of them. I don’t believe he’s broken one. I don’t use them, and I don’t recommend it.
As others have said: drink around a couple of cases of beer that comes in crown top bottles, and call it a day. If you’re brewing beer, that certainly can’t be a trial. If you’re worried that the beer is ready to bottle, and won’t wait until you’ve emptied the bottles, don’t worry. It can usually sit in there for a couple of extra weeks without a problem. I know this from experience, I am lazy when it comes to bottling,
Having said “crown”, my first few batches were all screw-top (but brown PET bottles made for beer) and they were just great.
Interestingly, I now find out you can get Grolsch-style topsseparately…