Bottles for Beer Brewing
Most people prefer to use the standard 750ml amber bottle with a
crown seal. One dozen of these bottles holds 9l, which makes
your calculations rather easy. Resealable screw cap bottles are also
quite satisfactory, although the seals do wear out after a time.
Care should be taken that the bottle has sufficient strength for the
capping process and the internal gas pressure. This would eliminate the
use of the 'No deposit—No return' type of bottle for example.
Unless you emptied the bottles yourself, they should be carefully
cleaned out before use. To do this, they should be soaked in water
containing washing-up detergent for some hours, cleaned with a bottle
brush and then rinsed thoroughly to remove all traces of detergent. Then
they can be drained by standing Upside down in a plastic bucket.
A very useful draining rack can be made by inserting lengths of
2.5cm dowel stick into holes drilled in a piece of 2.5cm plywood. The
bottles are placed upside down on the dowel sticks where they can drain
and dry. Another type of draining rack can be made by cutting holes,
slightly smaller than the diameter of the bottles, in a piece of wood.
The bottles are inverted in the holes.
The bottles can be stored awaiting use by packing them upside down in
clean cardboard boxes with divisions in them, such as those that gin,
whisky and other spirits are packed in.
Before use, the bottles should be sterilized with sodium
metabisulphite solution and rinsed with water.
Once you have your bottles clean for the first time, by rinsing and
draining them as soon as you empty them, you can save a lot of tedious
washing-up. If you are extremely careful about rinsing and storing them,
it is possible to omit sterilization without too much risk.
The crown seals can be hammered on to the bottles with a hand sealer.
This is very cheap and effective. Alternatively, it can be done easily
and safely with the much more expensive lever-arm machine. To minimize
the risk of breakage when using the hand sealer, the bottles should be
rested on a solid piece of wood placed on a firm surface such as a
concrete floor. A heavy mallet is ideal for hitting on the seals.
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