To reuse bottles or not?

everyone re-uses bottles. everyone except Jamil.
good for him. the rest of us have been doing it forever without any trouble. if you happen to come across a bottle that shows crud or hasn't been cleaned right, toss it and move on. not worth the time.

it is not hard to clean bottles. rinse after use.
Jamil is a great asset to the community but his brewing world is not like most others. if you notice off flavors in your beer, the quality of the bottle is but one of 100 things to think about. given how easy it is to use clean bottles it is rarely a problem.
Cheers.

 

I have a few guidelines I try to follow, but I generally reuse when I can. In general, I don't keep bottles that had sours, brown glass only, & I usually try to rinse the bottles as soon as they're empty with the hottest water my tap can manage, shaking the bottle as the water is poured out, to try to get any remaining yeast & whatnot at the bottom; usually if I wait & the bottom dries out, I toss it & move on. I've heard talk of a suggested maximum number of uses (6 maybe?) due to stress to the glass from bottle conditioning, but I haven't had an issue from reusing yet.

 

Did he buy a new carboy for every batch he brewed too? Bottles are just midget carboys with a cap to hold pressure instead of an airlock to release it. If you can clean all the gunk and crud out of a carboy with a PBW/Oxiclean soak and a brush, there is absolutely no reason you can't do it in a bottle. Heck, bottles are easier to clean because of the shape of the necks.

Best practice. Open beer, pour into clean proper galssware, leave yeast sediment in bottle, immediately rinse bottle with hot tap water until visibly clean at the bottom. Allow to dry. Store. On bottling day, hot Oxi, rinse well, sanitize well, bottle, condition, place in fridge, repeat.

I use bottles that may or may not have previously had sours in them for clean beers I have in the cellar to age. No issues. I've still got some of my first bottles from 3.5 years ago in the garage awaiting beers (I only bottle sours and big beers now after getting into kegging).

Jamil is a great resource, but his recomendations on starter size and new bottles are overkill.

 

As soon as I am done pouring beer into my glass I rinse the bottle out. I do not care if it is hot or cold water as long as it is rinsed. I look in my bottles on bottling day and if there is any thing on the bottom they go in the bin.

 

If I recall correctly, Jamil may have been referring to buying new bottles when entering a competition. Anyway, I reuse bottles as well. I'm somewhat picky, no raised letters, no weird sizes mostly because I like to compete and a fair number of competitions don't allow marked bottles or etching. I train all my bottle "suppliers" to rinse well. I've never had a problem. I always look inside every bottle to see if there are any deposits. If there are they get tossed. Having said that, I toss very few. A 30 minute soak in PBW or oxyclean free is all you need.

 

I don't bottle anymore, but when I did I was using my father-in-laws returnable bottles from the 80's-90's(?). He'd used them for about 20 years before I started.

No infections.

Advocating using bottles only once is not only ridiculous, it's incredibly wasteful (even when recycled). No disrespect to Jamil, but he's wrong about his bottling practices.

 

Dumbest thing ive ever heard, when I do bottle which isn't often it is in reused bottles, and if you soak even the nastiest bottle in PBW for hours it will come clean.

 

Never had a problem reusing bottles. Just make sure they aren't crusty and sanitize them on bottling day.

 

Jamil must have purchased a glass house which makes beer bottles....I always reuse bottles, even the "new" bottles I get, just have to drink the beer out first.

 

I bottle all of my beers and could not imagine not re-using as many as I could. Any disappointing results inside the bottles were directly attributable to some other mistake I made; to date I never had an issue I could blame on the bottle.

 

Which episode was this?

 

Shouldn't reuse kegs either.

Jerry Lewis never wore the same pair of socks twice.

 

Not sure of the exact episode but he says that on most of the shows about competitions. Instead of paying $12 for a case of new bottles I'd rather pay money for bottles filled with beer and then clean them. I've never had a problem as of yet.

 

If that's the context he says it in (I don't know if it is), then it's a little misleading to say that Jamil advised against reusing bottles (out of context). I use new bottles for competitions. And I know I'm not the only one. For competitions, some people really like to minimize risks and eliminate variables.

 

Yeah, that's an important bit that's been left out.

 

+1

 

I use new bottles for competitions. I used to reuse bottles for competitions, not anymore as I want to remove any chances of problems.

For at home consumption if I bottle, I reuse bottles.

Edit - Jamil has competition results most dream of.

 

I tend to re-use bottles but I wouldn't re-use the same bottles over and over again because it is difficult to remove all of the residue from previous brews. I would only re-use bottles once.

 

"I tend to re-use bottles but I wouldn't re-use the same bottles over and over again because it is difficult to remove all of the residue from previous brews. I would only re-use bottles once."

That is why I rinse out the bottle when I pour it into my glass. Otherwise your having to purchase a lot of bottles or beer to re-use the bottles, which if your rich isn't a problem. I guess.