Grunaki
Active Member
I've been given a crapload of wine bottles, but I don't much fancy making wine as
a) I hardly ever drink it (although I don't mind it now and again)
and
b) Wine kits are about 2-3 times the cost of beer and cider kits.
I'd like to put beer or cider in them instead as I now have loads of them, and It'd be a good storage solution.
(Have mentioned before how it's a total pain in the **** to get hold of beer bottles over here as there's a 10 cent deposit per bottle on them, so people like to store shitloads of them up and take them back when they have enough for another case.. Used to do it myself before I started brewing.. I'd happily give someone 20 bucks for 200 beer bottles, but you never know where to find the people who have them, and I'm not going to hang around beer stores approaching strangers to sell me their bottles... :-Z )
So anyway, was all up for this idea, but then the Wife's Uncle (who's a home-brewer himself) reminded me that you can't cork beer or cider because the gas pops the cork out, and you can't cap wine bottles because they don't have the ring around the lip.
So then I considered getting champagne corks and the little wire cages to keep the caps on, but I ran that by the guy at the brew store I go to and he said it would be a risk as champagne bottles are purposely made thicker than regular wine bottles because of the pressure and he wouldn't recommend it. (Although he could just have been trying to blag my head so I'd buy his PET plastic bottles for $15 for a case of 24 500ml ones (so you'd need two to bottle up a carboy or FV)).
Can anyone see a work-around for this?
a) I hardly ever drink it (although I don't mind it now and again)
and
b) Wine kits are about 2-3 times the cost of beer and cider kits.
I'd like to put beer or cider in them instead as I now have loads of them, and It'd be a good storage solution.
(Have mentioned before how it's a total pain in the **** to get hold of beer bottles over here as there's a 10 cent deposit per bottle on them, so people like to store shitloads of them up and take them back when they have enough for another case.. Used to do it myself before I started brewing.. I'd happily give someone 20 bucks for 200 beer bottles, but you never know where to find the people who have them, and I'm not going to hang around beer stores approaching strangers to sell me their bottles... :-Z )
So anyway, was all up for this idea, but then the Wife's Uncle (who's a home-brewer himself) reminded me that you can't cork beer or cider because the gas pops the cork out, and you can't cap wine bottles because they don't have the ring around the lip.
So then I considered getting champagne corks and the little wire cages to keep the caps on, but I ran that by the guy at the brew store I go to and he said it would be a risk as champagne bottles are purposely made thicker than regular wine bottles because of the pressure and he wouldn't recommend it. (Although he could just have been trying to blag my head so I'd buy his PET plastic bottles for $15 for a case of 24 500ml ones (so you'd need two to bottle up a carboy or FV)).
Can anyone see a work-around for this?
