Reuse of twist top bottles and caps, not using crown seals

Looking at the REUSE of twist top caps on twist top bottles, not using crown seals on twist top bottles.
Its not clear to me how world wide the use of the term twist top is. I mean a cap that can be removed with the hand alone, no need for a bottle opener, on a small bottle, 250ml or 375ml, that last being what we call stubbys.
My neighbour told me that he just reuses the twist top off a commercial beer, just washes them. I was a bit sceptical, mainly because I havent seen any mention


Does work pretty well in practice. You have to take a bit of care putting the cap on, basically making sure it goes on square, and I use a gadget thats designed to assist with the getting them off to put tighten them up. This gadget is basically just a socket that goes over the cap and has plastic ridges inside it, like whats used for larger cap removers.
Havent actually drunk a large number of stubbys sealed like that yet, but have bottled a couple of batches using that approach.
From a theoretical point of view I cant see why if it works for the brewerys, it cant work for home brewing too.
What do people think ?

I wasnt doing it for the price, I normally bottle into brown PET bottles and am having a problem getting them at sensible prices.
The clear ex softdrink PET bottles dont suit me size wise, at least the ones I can get hold of readily. I dont drink any softdrink myself. The ones I can get readily are 1.25 l and that doesnt suit my drinking.

See if you can get your hands on some campaign bottles, they should take beer caps and should be readily available.

Plenty do drink beer from stubbys tho.
Dont need any of those tho, I have a mountain of those from when I just drank commercial beer.
Well, a decent stack, anyway |-)

But there you`ve gotta be careful too. Around my neck of the woods, the champagne bottles come with two different sizes of mouth, only one of which fits "normal" bottle caps. Off the top of my head I don`t remember brands, but bring an unused cap with you when you go to get them, or you`ll end up with a big pile of useless bottles. Unless you have some way of corking them - which I certainly don`t.
As an aside, I just did a quick search and found that corkers and corks are available, at least here in the US - not sure where everyone is.

To me the problem is the champagne bottle is only 7 ounces.

Down Under (i.e. Australia, where Rod appears to be), the Champagne bottles take a larger crown cap than beer bottles. I think we are like Europe in that regard, whereas I understand that in the USA the Champagne bottles have the same size crown as beer bottles, yes?
We would need to get different cappers and caps to suit. caps were originally really crown caps that were pressure-fitted to the thread on the bottle in the first place, and as the pressure within the bottles grows with carbonation, it would give the same seal as fitting a crown cap to a threaded bottle.
However, I reckon you`d need to make sure that you used the same batch of caps with the same batch of bottles, as slight variations in bottle production could lead to ill-fitting caps if you mix them up.
Personally, I think that caps are so cheap that I wouldn`t be bothered reusing the old ones, just in case. Get a bench capper and some new crown caps, and use a bit of elbow grease. After all, we talking about precious beer here!

US champagne bottles fit crown caps, Euro ones don`t.
Twist offs? Risky finish to a lot of good work, IMO.
Glass cider bottles with threaded tops and replace the cap with a screw off plastic soda cap has worked for me with meads (cuz they`re sweet and I wonder about the cap gasket messin` with beer).
-Bubble-
PS 2 weeks ago I drove past the Crown Cap Co. near Philadelphia, PA. I did not stop in for a tour or even to buy 10,000 caps. Shame on me.

when I lived there. Had to go back on vacation to do it.

I have never had a problem with a seal. I still question the reuse of bottle caps, though.

brewerys, it should would just as well for the home brewer.
The only valid point is that its probably a bit quicker and easier to use crown seals with a proper capping machine.

Likely I will get off my bum and get a decent capper and use crown seals, just because its a bit less fiddly.
I was planning to do most of the brews into Cooper`s PETs, but I really prefer to drink out of stubbys rather than fart around with glasses etc, not completely thrilled about the idea of PET the more I think of it.
And I have just had 3 PETs burst in the second batch too. Cant have got the bottle sugar wrong, used the carbonation drops that came with the kit and I cant have put more than 2 in each of the burst bottles.
None of the first batch burst, have to see what Coopers have to say about it when I leave it for a while and see how many more of that batch burst.
The PETs cant have been mistreated either, just rinsed them out with cold water, didnt even sterilise with hot water.
They`re surprisingly expensive anyway. Cheaper to get a decent capper for stubbys.

The SG was 1.004 at bottling.
One of the glass 375ml twist top bottles wasnt anything special pressure wise. which never exploded. All different brews out of cans tho.

to be careful to match the caps to the bottles in case there are variances in bottle threads, especially if you have a mix of bottles (e.g. VB & Tooheys). 1.004 does not of itself mean that it had finished. A couple of Q`s on that:
Did you watch the SG for a couple of days before bottling?
Did the temperature drop before bottling (can slow down fermentation so it appears finished)?
Did you use that "dry beer enzyme" to get a drier (awful tasting) beer that is "safe for diabetics" (will take beer closer to 1.000)? test them, and see if they seem over-carbonated (too bloody bubbly). Maybe it isn`t the beer, maybe it`s the bottles.
Oh, and aren`t the bottles something like 640ml? IIRC, those carbonation drops are really made for 375ml, two = 750ml. Two drops in a 640ml bottle is over-carbonating.
Another thing you might want to try is bulk priming. I`m only recently converted to it. You get a second fermenter, or other 23L plastic bucket - call it a "priming bucket", and drop a boiled solution of your priming sugar into it (can be sugar, dextrose, barley malt, wheat malt, honey, whatever). Then stick a 10mm food-grade hose on the tap of your fermenter and run it in to your priming bucket. The beer will mix with the priming sugar pretty evenly. You then have all of your beer primed to exactly the same amount, no matter what the size of your bottles. cheers, Ross.

[followups trimmed to rec.crafts.brewing] Shop) with a name something like superautomatica or other, similarly understated reference. You can get them in Big-W too if you don`t have a LHBS. Hand cappers are a no-no with threaded bottles (weaker walls - picture yourself holding a bunch of glass shards where the bottle should be.) sugar and glucose. That little Brigalow gadget is OK, but you get the same carbonation no matter what style of beer you are brewing, not always desirable. Also, sometimes the sugar can clog and create an air pocket, so you end up under-carbonating a bottle or two. pretty good results by going a little further and mixing dry and liquid malt extracts and boiling with hops (extract brewing, a.k.a. gloop stirring). Soon to try my hand at "mashing", i.e. brewing from malted grains - have tasted some pretty good beers made that way.
Do you know about the Aussie brewing email lists? Here`s a couple: http://au.groups.yahoo.com/group/ozkitbeers/
Also, this site (for the Oz CraftBrewing list) has some good info about Aussie brewing. There are some pretty good tips on the site under Materials and Methods, worth checking out. help through evaporative cooling. Or if you have an old fridge lying around, you could set up a thermostat to control it and put the fermenter into it (no shit! check out the links above).
Personally, I have a bit of space under the house where I keep the fermenters, generally the brews stay under 26?C even on really hot days (the air can be hot but that 23L of liquid can take some time to react to it - and overnight temps drag it back down). I prefer to brew in the cooler months, but hey, gotta have something to drink! The yeast under the tin lid can be OK, but there are a great many more out there to choose from. See your LHBS (`cause you won`t find them in Big-W or K-Mart).

Bugger all even have pics of their cappers tho. Likely its this one. http://www.shb.com.au/equipment%20_info.htm been open when I`ve been past. Isnt even listed in the phone book either, so I cant just ring and check if its open. Gotta geta haircut next week and its in the same arcade, so I`ll try again.

At any rate, places like Grain&Grape and Grumpy`s do a good mail service. that won`t be on my "must drink" list, including one where I used that "dry beer enzyme" - it`s just awful, I`ll be tipping that one out (tested 2 bottles, yuck! so 26 bottles to be emptied now!) and that is what you want at the start of your fermentation. So let it get all foamy, it will be well aerated (actually, can be well aerated without being foamy, but you get the picture).
Basically, you want oxygen at the start to help build up the yeast numbers, and not at the end when it will just oxidise your beer. So actively aerate the wort when putting it into the fermenter, then try to minimise splashing for bottling etc. yeasts. If you look at G&G`s ingredients page you will see a big list of different yeasts:
Most of those are liquid yeasts. Many good reports, but I haven`t tried them yet. The liquid yeasts cost more, but you can mitigate that by making a 15L starter from a packet and splitting into stubbies and refrigerating for later batches. I won`t go into details because I`ve never done it myself, and there are plenty of pages on the web about it.
Here are some links about the different yeasts: http://consumer.lallemand.com/danstar-lalvin/ danstar.html http://www.wyeastlab.com/ http://www.whitelabs.com/

Just started one of those this am, and will do another Coopers Bitter likely tomorrow am with the cooler change due thru here late this arvo. I`ll stick it under the cooler if it gets much above 27 after that.

Just started one of those this am, and will do another Coopers Bitter likely tomorrow am with the cooler change due thru here late this arvo. I`ll stick it under the cooler if it gets much above 27 after that.

You make a really good point. I`ve never used twist offs, but your point about it being hard to get past the fact that they seem to work for the breweries is very good. Does anybody have any experience with using twist offs? It would be a cheaper alternative if the will work.