broke my capper, bottles, capping questions

[SteveDodds]

I broke my capper yesterday. I am not real heavy on home brewing. I am wondering if there is a better way to bottle. It has become impossible around here to find non screw off bottles. I even tried talking to the local bottle redemption place and told him I would pay 10 cents for every non screw off bottle he could find me. I have been bottling the same way for the last 20 years since I got into this. I have always just used one of the red cappers that came with my kit. Many years ago I did some research on using screw off bottles. At the time there was no decent way to do this. Has this changed in the last dozen years or so? I have also read about using plastic pop bottles. Does this work ok? Do I need to buy new caps to do this? 1 reason I brew is to save money. I don't want to go spending a bunch of money to keg or anything like that. I really only brew with extracts.

I did try looking through the sticky at the top. I made it though the first 10 pages and didn't really see anything other than talk about the dip tube.

 

[shanecb]

There's still no decent way to bottle with twist off bottles. Your best bet would be to use a bench style bottle capper and using standard crown caps. Twist off bottles are a bit on the weaker side so the standard hand capper that grips tight on the neck would have a higher tendency to break them.

Reusable plastic beer bottles could certainly be an option for you. Pop bottles also do work.

 

[Flboy]

I agree, I just bottled a 5 gal batch using a bench capper with twist off bottles. Not a single failure. I tried one using a hand capper and broke the neck. Soda bottles are great! And with 20, 33, and 66 oz sizes, bottling is fast. Their light size is a pain tho, fall over till filled. Reuse the original caps.