Beer craft lovers know how fun and rewarding an experience home brewing is. Brewing beer is part science and part art. The simple steps of heating water and grain, boiling the mixture with hops, cooling and fermentation result in packaging home-made beer you can be proud to drink with friends and family. If you’re just getting into home brewing, or if you have been homebrewing for a while, you may be wondering if the bottles you’re using are best suited for you.
To preserve the integrity of your product, you need durable, food-safe containers that ensure your beverages taste as good as when first made. The right bottle will increase your enjoyment, which is why you need to do careful research before making your final purchase. There are a variety of options in beer bottling to fulfil your growing needs and delight your customers. Before you choose the perfect representation of beer bottles for home brewing, you need to consider a few factors to help you make the right decision.
The Right Size and Shape to Increase Your Enjoyment
There are several types of beer-compatible bottles on the market. The wide range of shapes, sizes and colours make it easy to find something for anyone’s taste. Choosing a bottle type for your homebrew is up to personal preference, and the following types are some of the most popular options.
Glass Long Neck Bottles
So you like popping the top of your beer with your cool keychain opener, a lighter, some other surface or object you shouldn't be – we get it. If you love the snap of a bottle cap popping off, you're more of a glass long-neck type. These friendly and familiar beer bottles for home brewing have an iconic long neck and round shoulders that resemble what you grab from the local brew shop, pub or brewery.
Also known as the standard longneck bottle or industry-standard bottle, it has a uniform capacity, height, weight and diameter and can be reused on average 16 times. It contains 330 ml of delicious beer, perfect for all forms of brewing and robust enough for multiple uses. Its strong modern design allows packers to easily seal off the top with a small bottle cap, reducing the size of the seal and thus saving money. Although the longneck shape is an unmistakable option, other shapes are also available, which can be equally appealing. Many beer bottles are sold in amber (brown) bottles. Light coloured brewing bottles when exposed to light sources can create a chemical reaction that negatively affects the taste of the brew housed inside.
Glass Swing Top Bottles
These homebrew bottles are vintage style bottles that seal themselves, where the glass wing top is very convenient. The self-locking swing cap is built to seal in your beer batch after batch. Usually constructed of heavy-duty, zinc-plated steel wire, the attached closures feature polyethylene plastic stoppers and food-safe rubber. These stylish and ornate beer brewing bottles are available in 24 or 12 packs of either 500 ml or 750 ml.
Polished, professional, and nostalgic glass swing top bottles are perfect for those who aim to give homebrew as a gift or just have great style. These bottles might also be ideal for beer, cider or kombucha. As functional as they are beautiful, swing-top bottles go by many names. You may also recognise them as Fido Bottles or Kilner Bottles.
Growlers
Growlers are becoming the go-to option for craft brewers looking for an effective yet affordable alternative to conventional beer bottling. They are designed to make beer transportable, and they come with a convenient carry handle. The term “growler” has been around since the 1800s. This term was used to describe means to carry beer home from the local pub.
Modern growlers are practical and stylish beer packaging solutions and often come with a metal screw cap. Characterised by the jug-like shape, growlers range in size from one to three litres. Traditional growlers are made with amber glass. There are several filling methods you can choose for filling growlers with your craft beer. The most traditional way to add beer to a growler is to attach an extension tube to the beer barrel faucet. This way, you can fill the growler from the bottom up, similar to the way you bottle homebrew beers.
Choose Your Beer Bottle Closure
The type of bottle you choose will determine the type of beer bottle caps you select. When caps are not included, make sure to match your closure to your specific bottle and neck finish. The most common cap for individual beer bottles is the crown beer bottle cap. They come in universal sizes to fit industry standard bottles. These caps are available as pry-off or twist-off. Pry-off caps require a bottle opener to remove the cap, while twist-off caps can be easily removed by twisting the cap with your hand. Growlers generally have screw-top finishes that allow you to pair them with a cap that fits the neck of your container.
Consider a Bottle Rinser for Easy Clean & Sanitise
When you decide on your brewing supplies bottles and caps, the new step is to choose cleaning tools. Cleaning and sanitising your home brewing beer equipment is essential. It’s especially crucial to sanitise everything you use after the boil. One of the greatest investment you can make that can make bottling easier is to buy a pump-action bottle rinser for cleaning and sanitising bottles. You can also find a combo of bottle rinser and a drawing tree for useful storage or sanitation of your bottles. You can easily find a tree that holds more than 60 bottles.