Bottling - recommendations?

[sam132]

Hey guys,

Any recommendations on what I should be looking for/where to buy bottles for my cider (I will be making them fizzy) so they need to be able to have an air lock and handle compressed air.

Sam

 

[Moley]

I don't understand your reference to an air lock, but they do need to be able to handle CO2 pressure produced by the bottle fermentation.

Your options are plastic or glass.

Any plastic bottles which have held fizzy drinks should be suitable, and you also re-use the caps. Typical examples would include 5/600ml cola bottles, 1 litre dry ginger / tonic water etc. mixer bottles and 2 litre pop bottles. 2 litre fizzy mineral water bottles would also be ok, the ‘value’ types are usually around 16p if you wanted to buy them just for the bottles and ditch the contents.

If you want to use glass bottles you will need to buy a crown capper and a bag of caps, but should be able to get the bottles for free if you ask at your local pubs or scavenge around recycling centres. Magner's or Bulmer's bottles are the best, they hold proper pints and their labels soak off easily in hot water.

 

[Wendy1971]

used 2 litre coke or lemonade bottles are fine and cheap too :thumb:

 

[RobWalker]

plastic is especially good because bottles are so easy to find and if you dent the bottle slightly when you fill it, it'll pop out and then you know it's carbonated :)

glass bottles just inspect them for cracks first, but yeah, the wall in my back garden is completely full of them, 60 odd pint bottles.

 

[reebok]

Spread the word amongst family, friends and work colleagues that you want their empty glass beer and cider bottles. You'll be amazed how many you accumulate for free over only a few months!

 

[Wendy1971]

when we were desperate for lemonade bottles we bough 10 2 litre bottles of 17p lemonade and threw the lot down the sink just to get the bottles :shock:

 

[RobWalker]

Spread the word amongst family, friends and work colleagues that you want their empty glass beer and cider bottles. You'll be amazed how many you accumulate for free over only a few months!

totally, i've recently gotten about 25 single serving wine bottles from a friend that works in a bowling club so I can give wine out as gifts :)

in the same vein, morrisons do a curry sauce that's 9p, so if you need decent sized glass jars to store anything in, go and get them! emptying them down the sink will suck though, they smell awful.

 

[sam132]

Cheers guy, brought 12 x Grolsch style bottles in the end as it meant I didn't need to also buy a capper and caps!

:

Sam

 

[tonyhibbett]

Grolsh bottles are ideal!