Hello
It has been about 15 years since we have done any homebrewing, so i am more than a little out of date. We would love to be able to bottle in growlers. I have a few questions about growlers.
1- How are they capped? do the screw tops simply just screw on to the top? I know it sounds like a dumb question. What creates a good seal?
2- How long will they keep?
3- can the caps be reused?
Any info will be a big help.
Thank you in advance
Mike
I do it regularly. Use the good caps which have a rubber caulk like seal under the lid. The cheap metal ones with a cardboard gasket suck and the black plastic ones don’t seal quite so well either.
Make sure the growlers you use are designed to with stand the pressures of bottle conditioning. Most aren’t. Growlers are typically designed to hold the pressure of pre-carbonated beer filled from a keg.
I would not recommend carbonating in them, if you counter pressure fill them they should last 6 months if kept cold. I use the plastic caps with the carboard/wax liners. I have beers in growlers over a year old that were still carbonated just fine. They showed their age in flavor lost.
Thank you for all the advise. :cheers:
i bottle in pet growlers which i bought off from ebay with the caps with the rubber gaskets. the only problem is you have to pour the whole growler or you risk yeasting the beer. I am looking at a new product called u keg 128 that would solve this problem also it looks like it would be really cool to bring to your friends house
I assume you are planning to prime with sugar then bottle using growlers. I have done it before with no problems also. +1 on the caps with the rubber seal.
Another option is to use soda bottles. We drink a lot of original (not flavored) seltzer water. Since it is just carbonated water there is no taste left behind. The bottles can withstand the pressure plus you can tell how carbonation is going as the bottle becomes hard. I also fill them from the tap often to take along in a cooler with no worry about broken glass.
Another vote for what Mark said, PET soda bottles work great and can easily take the pressure.
