I can't belive I actually bought bottles :(

Yup - Beer is much more susceptible to spoilage problems. It is critical to be very sanitary in beer making.

Yeah, but there's cardboard dust, LOTS of it, at least to my experience. We dump 2 cases a minute of bottles onto the bottling line just by turning them upside down, so the bottom of the bottle is down, and picking up the case so the bottles fall out, and there's a fair amount of cardboard dust.

Our bottles are sparged ith nitrogen, so I like to kid myself that that blows out all the dust, but it probably really is self-delusion.

I wasn't around when they bought the line, but I think the thing that washed bottles in-line was like another US$15K or so.

Dave

So far, I'm just rinsing after use, and then pouring the contents of my iodine spray bottle through each bottle, letting sit a couple of minutes, and then rinsing before filling.

Certainly a lot less work than the old beer bottles were :)

hawk

Yikes! New bottles are not much more.

Are you in/near Altoona?

But I'm desparate. It's either buy empty bottles or buy full bottles . . . :(

It's about an hour and a half from here.

hawk

Well, after reading that you did it Hawk, I did too. I had a 3 gal carboy with a Welch's white grape/peach sitting in the darkroom for the past 5 months while I slowly collected a clear bottle here and another one there. This was taking too long, so I visited the wine supply shop and bought a case of empties. I've consumed two bottles already and am happy I did it!!

I live in a very remote area, an island actually. We have a county recycling center here and I go there, with good shoes, and climb about in the piles of bottles picking out a certain design that is commonly used here in the US, a clear straight-sided 1.5 liter bottle. I put them into a bathtub full of hot water with about two cups of bleach, and let them soak until the water has cooled enough to put my hands in. Then I peel the labels off and rinse them out. I have never had to buy bottles! Now =that's= what I call recycling!!! Bob aka the Penny Pincher!

I'm gonna have to do to that too. I have actually the same thing going, since Thanksgiving, and am in the same boat. I have 4 clears, but only a gallon and a half of wine... bottles will cost me closer to $15.00 usd after shipping as the nearest wine shop is 2 hours away.

:(

email: dallyn_spam at yahoo dot com please respond in this NG so others can share your wisdom as well!

many years ago, when I first started brewing, I bought ten cases of refillable longnecks for $2/case.

I took them home to clean. A large cockroach scurried out of the first when I tried to rinse it.

I'd known that they hadn't been *cleaned*, but I'd assumed them empty! As much as two inches of beer, cigarettes, etc. *gagh*

I sunk the lot of them in the bathtub, poured in an entire gallon of bleach, turned on the fan, and closed the door for a week.

hawk

I've found an effectively unlimitted source at $7.20/case, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I did buy four more five gallon carboys, though (at about $17/each).

hawk, who will probably eventually have to break down and pay.

I'll probably just bottle a couple of them in brown and use them for myself.

Leads to an interesting question: does bottle color over time (years) change the wine? Or is just a function of apearance?

email: dallyn_spam at yahoo dot com please respond in this NG so others can share your wisdom as well!

I'd expect that the only difference bottle color makes is based upon light passing through--otherwise, there would be an issue of glass interacting with the wine (other than wine etching the glass), and I think we'd know about this.

hawk