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My first ever batch is going fine and next weekend I will bottle my first beer.

I can get this type of bottles for cheap (no need to buy capper, and caps).

http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/german-beer-bottle-suhas-tavkar.jpg

They are single use. Is this type of bottle good for bottling beer (priming sugar etc)? I'm a bit scared that the gasses might escape from such a bottle.

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    Still drives me up the wall when we edit posts that were dead for 5 years...
    – dmtaylor
    Oct 28, 2019 at 13:30

2 Answers 2

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These are called swing-top bottles, and they're fine for re-use as long as they originally contained a carbonated drink like beer, and the glass has no chips or cracks. The usual advice regarding re-using commercial bottles applies here. First make sure they are clean, and then sanitize them before filling with delicious homebrew.

The easiest way to clean bottles is make sure they never get dirty. After drinking the beer, rinse the bottle before the dregs have dried out, and before any mould or fungus has had a chance to grow. If the bottles are grimy inside, a 24-hour soak in OxyClean followed with a thorough rinse should dislodge any gunk.

There are different ways to sanitize, but I find that dunking the bottles for a minute or two in a bucket of no-rinse sanitizer (like StarSan) and then draining, is the simplest and quickest.

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    The easiest way to clean used bottles is to rinse the out right away....totally agree. After rinsing I leave a little water inside so whatever unseen that might be left behind doesn’t ever get a chance to dry. Then all I have to do to reuse is rinse and sanitize (I used star San)
    – Escoce
    Nov 2, 2019 at 14:22
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Yes you can if they were designed for this (originally had beer, so you know the glass is strong enough) and are in good shape. I actually like to use them for porter or stout. I have used mine 4 times already, without any issue.

After some time the seals may leak a bit though, in this case it's best to replace them. You can find more about it here : Swing-top bottles leaking carbonation

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