What do you do with your empty bottles?

All 12oz bottles get saved for re-use (home brew) and all specialty bottle get saved for display in our future brewery.

 

I also save most 12oz bottles to reuse with my homebrew. I've been collecting some 22oz bottles where cool labels are printed directly on the bottle (think Stone) and will make those into drinking glasses.

 

If I have 10 cents per bottle invested, the empties go back to the store. However, I'm a bottle collector so I do keep one of everything that I drink. Beers that I buy out-of-state without any possibility of a return for a deposit (if any deposit at all) are reused for homebrew. I don't re-use any bottles larger than 12 oz. so if they aren't worth 10 cents in Michigan, then the label gets removed for my collection and the bottle goes into the curbside recycling bin.

None of those uses applies 100% to any of my bottles, so I didn't enter any vote above.

 

Peel the label off for photo album, toss bottle in recycle bin.

 

I only save bottles from one-offs/beers I won't be able to get again.

 

I save very few and I take the rest for recycling.

 

save the special bottles, toss the rest.

i keep some caps as well.

 

I was saving rare or limited bottles but even those were starting to get overwhelming so now I hardly save any. I have maybe 4 bottles. They all go into the manucipal recycling bin.

Helped to clean the girlfriends yard the other day and we took in almost 400 pounds of glass bottles, received 37 dollars. Not worth my time sorting then hauling them all down to the recycling center.

 

All of those bottles were in the yard??!

 

Over the years they have made returning bottles and cans more difficult to the point of its not worth it. Most places only take 144 total and then you have to come back the next day or go to another place. I have the wife do it but even she is starting to throw them away or give them to less well off family members. What's worse is that most of the beer we drink the machines won't read the codes so the bottle jockeys have to count them anyway. Which takes more time, i liked it when you brought your stuff and they counted it for you and you were done. Oh we only keep a few bottles that look cool.

 

Since i started trying to see just how many different beer bottles i could drink in my own home 7 years ago, i'm currently having this same discusion with my wife just what to do with the emptys - I used to have a massive display in the large garage I had in the old house. Managed to get hold of loads of crates when we moved into our new house, but need some way of displaying them. Any ideas?

 

I really want to know what you blacked out in that photo...

 

**** dungeon, obviously.

I save Jester King bottles (one of each type) because the art is so awesome. I have also saved some screen printed bottles. I recently threw away my collection of every unique beer I've had in the past ten years. It was hard to do, but felt great to get rid of well over 1,000 bottles in Rubbermaid tubs.

 

I selected the keep them all answer. But what I really do is I rinse them and then put them in the garage. When I get a bunch saved up I haul them to work with me and give them to a guy that home brews. I let him toss the ones he does not want anymore and in turn he slides me some home brew every once in a while.

 

I keep special ones and reuse some for homebrewing.

 

At first, I just kept the bottles with amzing artwork, or the labels my lady deemed "cute" (Terrapin). Alas there was not too much room at the inn so, they all got chucked. I did save one :


I grew up in St. Louis with this radio station and could not give this one up. (Even if the brew was just OK.) I just save the bottle caps. I also take a picture of each new beer and save it on imgur.

 

I save the one's from Stone, preferably the special release bombers. I did save my first Heady can and Zombie Dust bottle, too.
I keep some bottle caps; plan is for a shadow box of some kind in the future...not sure if that plan will ever come to fruition.

 

Have one of many years of different Thomas Hardy's, most of the Stone and Rogue bottles, and a few rare discontinued bottles as well. Keep a lot of bottles relating to Ohio since that is home. It does seem to grow rather rapidly I will say.