If you drink a decent amount of beer chances are that you can build up a good collection of glass bottles. These can be used for bottling your homebrew beer which is a great way to save on bottles. We got a few tips for reusing those bottles.

However, there are a few tips we wanted to provide you with when looking to reusable commercial glass beer bottles.

The first thing is that if the bottles are twist off you cannot use them. You will not be able to re-cap them properly. This will cause you to lose C02 during carbonation and your beer will be flat. So don’t use twist-off glass bottles.

The second would be to just be aware of the thickness of the bottles. This is easy to judge just by weight. The heaver the glass bottle the thinker the glass is.

The thicker the glass the more durable the bottles will be. So if you are using glass bottles that are not as thin they may become less durable over time. This could result in under carbonated beer or you may have some bottles explode.

Now I have only seen this happen a few times and it only happens in reused commercial beer bottles. So just be aware of what bottles you are using and how old they are.

If you feel like a bottle might explode then chill it in the fridge to stop that yeast from making C02.

Lastly if you are reusing some swing top bottles keep in mind to replace the gaskets after they are used a few times. This will help keep the seal tight and assure you are not losing any C02 during carbonation.

Cheers,

Robert