Bottling

[Ash109]

Hi all my name is ashley I'm new to the home brew thanks to the Mrs who got me the starter kit. I'm now a few days away from bottling I'm in two minds weather to fork out and buy swing top bottles or just buy a capper and reuse bottles from beer I have brought. Any advise

 

[hoptoit]

I would stick with the capper if you've already got those bottles.
In the meantime keep an eye on eBay, Gumtree etc for swingtops at a good price.
I'm not that too fussed about them and out of my collection of about 200 bottles I've only got one.

 

[Tomgardner]

I get swing tops from my good independent bottle shop; the returned Hacker Pschorr empties are either the 30p deposit price or free, depending who's on. He's even sold me the plastic crates.

 

[chuffer]

the missus spotted these in the range yesterday, they might be worth considering:

http://www.therange.co.uk/make-your-own-home-brew-beer-bottle-pack-of-12/kitchen-&-dining-sale/The-Range/fcp-product/51073

 

[wfr42]

The range bottles are a good price for new swingtop bottles.

Have a search on Gumtree. (I can't see your location on the mobile app) but someone in Dunfermline was selling lots of grolsch bottles.

 

[chuffer]

I'm collecting old Sharp's bottles at the moment - they're not too wide (so they fit ok in my crate) and the labels come off easy.......well this is the excuse I'm currently giving SWMBO as to why I keep coming back from Tesco's with bagfulls of them on the 4 for £6 deals

 

[wheazy_joe]

The range swing top bottles are good quality at a decent price, I have two boxes of them (maybe three). Grolsch bottles obviously are great also, and quite often on offer at £1.50 / bottle in tesco or asda, which if you were going to buy empty bottles anyway means you are getting the contents of the grolsch bottle for about 50-60p.

I use a mix of both recycled commercial beer bottles and bought swingtop & crown top bottles.

Like hotpoit says, use the bottles you have and add to your collection as and when required.

 

[Lesinge]

If you are going to use a capper don't bother with the £10 plastic ones if you intend to brew lots of beer as they fail after a short time and bottling becomes a nightmare. Get yourself a good metal one - I personally have a adjustable table top capper and it really has cut the time taken for bottling down by at least half.

 

[MyQul]

If you are going to use a capper don't bother with the ��£10 plastic ones if you intend to brew lots of beer as they fail after a short time and bottling becomes a nightmare. Get yourself a good metal one - I personally have a adjustable table top capper and it really has cut the time taken for bottling down by at least half.

Can't agree more on this. Quality is very unreliable. The first one I had lasted a year so I bought another one which died yesterday just as I was starting to cap. It was only about 3 brews old. So I bought a bench capper

 

[fourbob]

Really? My local hbs warned me off a cheap capper and recommended an "emily" for only a few quid more: it's a couple of years old now and has dealt with over 60 bottling sessions with no problems.
What happens when they fail - I don't like the thought of it giving up the ghost in the middle of bottling, especially as I often do this on Sundays, when I wouldn't have an alternative....

 

[Richie_asg1]

I would think that eventually something plastic would break, and looking at it I would think the corners where the two metal collars are held in the plastic body. High stress area and a sharp corner = failure sometime.

It would be worth getting a simple hammer type capper to keep as a back-up should something fail mid run.
I've seen quite a few at car boot sales so for £1 may be good to keep in a drawer. Wish I had bought one when I last saw one, but then there is always this year. - Always good to go with a shopping list in your head.

 

[jayjt29]

Id just reuse old bottles mate and use the money saved to buy a capper and a bottling wand and even another fermenter to turn into a bottling bucket, I wrote up a blog on one of my last bottling sessions on my website below.

Cheers
Jay :)