Hi Bob,

That is a lot of bottles, they must take up a lot of room to store. Just shows how long they can last though. I don’t have anywhere near that amount, but mine are the swing top bottles.

Cheers
Rob

Hi Alan,

This is a good point and very true, carbonation is obviously a pretty important part of brewing beer. I think I still prefer glass though, but that is just a personal choice. Although I won’t rule out plastic down the road. As I get more experienced with brewing it is something I will try out and I might end up preferring plastic.

Thanks for your thoughts
Rob

Hi Stephan,

You’re right it really comes down to personal choice. I do prefer beer from a bottle, rather than plastic. Having said that the point you made about gifting beer to friends is a valid one. A lot less painful to let plastic go than bottles, a great point and one that has got me thinking.

I am literally brewing today, just about to set things up to brew a red ale, so will have a couple of weeks to think about bottling.

Thanks for your thoughts
Rob

I use both these days. When I started I used just plastic, but the bottles that came with my home brew kit weren’t very good, so I started to replace then with 1 litre fizzy drinks bottles, and stuck with those for years, never had any issues really, and if you over prime then at least the plastic expands, which saved me once it twice!

But recently I’ve wanted to improve my brewing presentation and started wanting to use glass bottles so I’ve been collecting what I can and using glass swing top bottles, plus glass bottles that need capping and some plastic bottles too.

I much prefer the taste of my home brew from the glass bottles, but plastic is fine really, and it’s much easier to store empty plastic bottles than empty glass bottles, as they take up a lot of space and are heavy even when there’s no beer in them!

So it’s definitely a choice, both are fine and have pros and cons. If you have the space, patience and funds for glass, then do that, but if not, plastic is absolutely fine – it’s also less painful to part with a plastic bottle than a nice swing top bottle when gifting your beer to friends!

Great Point Rhys, plastic is bound to deteriorate over time, but I did wonder if that would actually make a difference to the taste of the beer. It obviously does if you have had a few that tasted bad. Thanks to your brother in law you went the glass route and got rid of that plastic taste. I would never go the plastic route, and as you say, you would never go back to plastic.

Thanks for leaving your thoughts on this subject, it is good to get feedback from real experience.

Cheers
Rob