Advise on old bottles please

[Gwen]

Calling on your experience

I bought a load of second hand brewing bits and these glass bottles were in with them. I have 1 pint, 1 litre and 1.13litre. They are screw tops with rubber seals. I have checked all the seals and they all look to be in really good condition considering how old these bottles must be.

My dilemma is I have a 30 bottle wine kit and a Demijohn of dandelion wine and 2 DJ of Nettle wine that will need bottling soon. I would like to leave the latter 2 for several months before we drink them. Do you think these bottles would be suitable to use for long term storage of wines? or would I be better of using (or not using) these for the quicker drinking wine.

Thanks

 

[The Baron]

They are pressure bottles that is they are suitable for Beer, Cider and Pop which have CO2 in them as long as no cracks or chips . I can not see why you could not use them for wine too but bear in mind beer and wine should be kept in a dark place especially if in clear bottles as they can become light struck so store in a cool dark place. The seals look similar to the ones used by Grolsch style bottles and if the same size are easily and cheaply bought replacements

 

[Gwen]

Thanks for that The Baron.

Yes it defiantly looks like they were a beer brewer rather than a wine maker. So that would make sense with the bottles.

I use the kitchen larder and a cabinet in the garage so kept in the dark. That was my second thought about using clear bottles. I got a couple crates of grolsh bottles with them too. Putting the rubber seals next to each other, the centre hole is slightly larger than a grolsh rubber hole. So will keep my eyes open for spares seals.

Hopefully yesterday was the last time I had cleaned the old labels of my last collection of donated wine bottles with all of these bottles

 

[The Baron]

If the holes are slightly larger just force them on or cut the centre hole slightly larger