cobalt blue bottles

[rlbrewer]

i have noticed that there are cobalt blue bottles for sale in my neck of the woods. does anyone have any experience using them? more specifically, does anyone know how they compare to brown bottles in protecting beer from uv light?

thanks,
sam

[BrianU21]

As far as I know and understand brown/amber is the best for protecting beer and anything lighter is...well...worse. Being that blue is lighter than brown, I would assume that blue bottles are not especially good at protecting the beer.

I would also think that blue bottles are more expensive than green and/or brown and that is why you don't see any in the marketplace. At least, I have never seen them for commercially available beer. I have seen blue bottles with swingtops for homebrew, though.

[Straub]

Really No Difference

The brown bottles protect beer the best but to a very limited extent. MGD and Miller High Life come in clear bottles. The difference that is made by the coloring of the bottles is minimal at best. The best way to protect beer is to keep it in a dark cool place. If you leave a clear bottle and a brown bottle out in the light they will probably spoil at nearly the same rate. Don't be afraid to use the blue bottles based on light. The biggest inhibitor to blue bottles is cost.

[rudge75]

MGD & High Life use reduced iso-alpha acid extracts for bittering. They will NEVER skunk. This allows them to bottle in clear glass without fear of light-struck flavours. Hooray for the science & marketing departments!

That said, if the blue bottle sets your product apart from the next guys why not bottle in blue?

Remember Sam Adams Triple Bock? It was/is one of the most memorable packages I've ever seen. And it's recognizeable from 50 feet away.

[steveg]

Blue and green bottles will have moderately better protection from UV light than clear, but they are still nowhere near brown for light struck protection.

To illustrate the minimal protective characteristics of green bottles (blue would be the same), open a Corona and a Heineken. Both skunky, right? But the Corona would probably have a stronger skunk aroma most of the time.

[BrewBoy]

Sam -

Mind passing on the contact info for the cobalt blue bottle supplier? I've been looking for some of these for a while.

Thanks!

Brian

brian.arnett@gmail.com

[pbutlert]

blue bottles

If these are the bottles I am thinking of, they are at least 5 years old, possibly 7. My only concern would be how the glass holds up with extended storage. Does it tend to become more brittle or weaker? We always rotate our glass, using the oldest first. Just a thought.........

[Mad-Brewer]

Cobalt Blue

I have seen studies which indiacte that Cobalt blue glass does in fact absorb the UV side of light by about 99.9%. It made sense to me with UV light being close to blue on the spectrum. But that issue aside, if you are looking for cobalt bottles, I think Crosby & Baker have them in the 500 ml size. I don't have a recent catalog, but I would call them.

Steve