Wine Bottles

A buck is about the going rate. Are you willing to invest some time and labor? OK if the bottles don't match?

Go to your local restaurant and ask if you can have the bottles from the recycling bin. I've picked up a hundred or so like that. Friends save bottles for me also. You have to wash and remove the labels, but the price is right. Ed snipped-for-privacy@snet.net

I asked a member of a major hotel's housekeeping staff to save a few bottles for me and I was uttely overwhelmed by the large trash bags of bottles she provided almost daily.

Hotels are a good source.

If you really mean bulk drop me an email.

I have a source for commercial winery quality bottles for 47 to 53 cents depending on the bottle. You'll need to buy 2,500 minimum.

Dave Stacy

You might want to contact the maintenance man at your local Catholi church and have him save the alter wine bottles for you. Not only d you get a standard sized bottle all the time you get the case to g with them

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Posted via MooTal

I just mentioned to friends that I was looking for bottles, with the result that I'm overwhelmed with bottles of all shapes and sizes, and my car sounds like a party when I'm driving it, with all the clinking coming from the boot! If I'm ever stopped on suspiscion of being under the influence (which I never am, of course), they'll have a hard time believing that I don't have a drink problem!

I also asked local pubs to save me their 1.5 litre vodka bottles, because they have an interesting shape, and the labels come off easily! Also, the larger bottle size means less washing!

Jo

All the alter wine bottles from my church are screw top and the commercial screw caps from piwine don't seem to fit. I tried Cribarri and LaSalle winery but they don't seem to know who supplies the screw caps or what size they are.

That is too much bulk for me. I will try the local resturants.

This brings up a good question.... can you cork screw top bottles?

Assuming you don't mind the looks......

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

I've thought the same thing, but never tried it. Mainly because the neck where the screw threads are looks very thin to me and I think you may see a lot of broken bottles trying to squeeze in a cork.

I think the problem is (if there is a problem) the neck of the screw top is tapered and does not hold the cork well.

I actually checked one this weekend and found that the inside diameter gets greater about 3/4" from the top, i.e. just below where the threads end. I did not try filling and corking any. My thinking was that it might make the corks devilishly hard to pull once the cork swells into the increased space.

Perhaps not all bottles have that shape. Just a 2 cents worth.

Art

I'd be very reluctant to try it. Corking applies a lot of force to the bottle, and the glass at the top of a screw cap bottle doesn't look very strong. I'd be scared that the bottle would break when corking.

news:...

Well, I'm not thrilled with them, but I do it. It probably depends on the bottle, but it is possible. I prefer to use bottles that were designed for corks, but I just couldn't pass up all the free bottles. I got up to about 30 cases of empty altar wine bottles (Mont La Salle port) before I finally told them to stop saving the bottles for me. I have used maybe 10 cases so far, using #8 agglomerated corks, for the "less distinguished" table wine I produce. Never had any problem inserting the corks or removing them, never had any breakage, etc. I've had wine in some of these for up to a year or so by now - no leakage issues either. I put the corks in dry, using a Portuguese floor-model corker. I've been using the #8 corks because I was worried that the necks might not be strong enough for the standard #9 corks. Based on my lack of problems, though, I'll probably try the #9 soon. I suppose for that matter you could save the aluminum screw tops and just screw them back on. Personally, I find that just too tacky-looking, but I would think it would probably work just fine (rinse them first!), and avoids any potential concerns about the necks being strong enough to take a cork.

If you want to use corks but aren't sure your bottles are strong enough, try filling a few with water or Pot. Meta solution and corking them. If you don't have any problems during corking, and they're still OK after a couple of months, try bottling a portion of your next batch in them.

Doug

For Christmas I received 4 bottles of homemade wine (2 from wine kits and 2 from Florida grapes). My brother put short corks in the screw top bottles. Seemed to work fine for him and they survived the trip north to Wisconsin and to my other brother in Colorado. Darlene