Reusing 22 oz. Bottles

[brauhaus]

Our brewery uses 22 oz. bottles that in the state we brew in are redeemable. We have cases and cases of redeemed 22's stored in the brewery. The labels we use are really sturdy and could easily make it through 2 more uses. I am looking for a way to clean and rinse these bottles so I can make our brewery more environmentally friendly and save some cash in the long run. Has anyone reused redeemed 22 ouncers, or have any experience or suggestions for a system (or a way to build a system) that might work?

Thanks and Cheers!
Chris

[JoeV]

back to the future

I think this is a great idea and have been considering it in my brewery. Its the way they used to do it, and still do it in some places. In my experience the re-usable bottles seem to be thicker glass to stand up to repeated washings, and the lables are screen printed or permanantly etched on the bottle. I havn't seen any bottle washers for small scale craft brewers. The Krones machines do something like 100,000 bottles per hour. I did do some design work on a bottle rack type washing system. The bottles would be upside down with a spray jet inside the bottle. You would make a manifold of these jets so you could wash a bunch of bottles at once. Hook up to your CIP and run a cycle. You would also need to wash the outside of the bottle so you would need a spray proof box. Really much like a restaurant dish washer but the dish racks would have spray jets that the bottles rest on. The problem is, in my opinion, its way to expensive to build something like this.

[einhorn]

Returnable bottles

My suggestion: talk to anyone who has done any time (not in prison) in Germany (where is Crassbrauer? Bitte melden). About 70% of all beer brewed in Germany in in returnable bottles/cases.

There are quite a few factors that need considering here including everything involving logistics.

Best of luck! Let us know how things go. The changing climate in the States (becoming "greener") could open the market for micros who recycle bottles. It surely fits the mold but the requirements for machinery is enormous.

Servus & Prost

[brewkettle]

Bottle Washer

Check the NABS site. I believe Ian is representing a small manual type washer that is currently owned by a brewery in Erie PA. I have 2 similar machines, they do 24 at a time.

[Rob Creighton]

I am presently having a local builder adapt a pop canister washer from a brew-your-own to a bottle washer for growlers and 500 ml bottles with 3 stations for the racks of bottles. 1. A caustic-chlorine solution wash with a sump. 2. A hot water rinse. 3. a sanitizer rinse. As soon as I have the finished unit on-site (hopefully this week) I can send you a picture if you want. I'm at rcreighton@grandriverbrewing.com

[bsapstead]

Chris,
We recently explored this option when an impending glass shortage led us to our stacks of recycled glass (nearly a pallets worth). We used the same rinser head that we use to sanitize prior to bottling. The unit sanitizes/cleans/rinses 16 bottles at a time (using a grabber that came with our maheen) and is on a cart with a total of three stations, all built out of pvc with small holes drilled at the proper alignment and driven by submersible pumps. This means that we could be working with up to 48 bottles at a time, each station running a different operation (clean/rinse/sanitize, clean/rinse/dry, whatever works best for you).

In the case of the cleaning we set up a cip with our keg cleaner which allowed us to both more easily control how fast the cleaner was blasted into the bottles as well as keeping our cleaner hot using the reservoir's heating element. This setup was very easy to use, inexpensive to build (pvc and a couple of aquarium pumps), and also very effective. Definitely worth investigating!

When you get your first reuse bottles cleaned and sanitized make sure you swab these bottles and take a culture to ensure that you are getting a thorough cleaning. I would recommend doing this before you put any of these bottles back into market. It would be a shame for a worthy cause to result in off beer. If you have any further questions or want to see some pictures let me know. Good luck!

[BelgianBrewer]

Bottle washing

Being from Belgium, washing bottles is a second nature. About 95% (or more) of all the bottles filled for the Belgian market are being washed and refilled.
We have and have installed several of these machines and are currently working on a large African project with returnable bottles.

A few things to keep in mind:
- Do not underestimate bottle washing. As a manufacturer you do not know where the bottles have been or how long they have been away. They could also have been used for other purposes by the buyer (storing oil, a chemical,...)
- A good bottle washer is crucial. Look into the numer of caustic baths, total wash time, automatic label expulsion,... when making a selection...
- Smaller machines start at around 4000BPH
- Especially if you are not using a tunnel pastuerizer, an excellent bottle washer is crucial. (Flies like beer, lay eggs in beer bottles... you get the picture if your bottle is not perfectly clean and/or are using a tunnel)...
- Bottle washers need good maintenance...

Let me know if you need to know more.

If you send me specs on the machine you are looking for, I could give you a price indication by PM.

BelgianBrewer

https://www.sbmbrew.com

[canyon]

Re : Use

Otto Bros. Brewing in Wyoming started reusing their silk screened 22's in the late eighties with a deposit system. They had built a nice washer out of a commercial pass through dishwasher that worked pretty well. They still manually inspected and cleaned them first and recycled or soaked the ones with visible cigarette butts etc. Anybody thinking they don't have room for this kind of thing never saw this 300 sq. foot brewery! It inspired me big time.

Small scale American brewers are in a unique position to foster the needed return to returnables. The disposable culture that big business has pushed through in this country is disgusting to say the least! Large deposits might help people realize that they are actually paying for the container they get their beverage in and they (or anyone else) then have real incentive to return it. Right on to Chris and anyone else going to returnables!

BOB'S YOUR UNCLE

[Straub]

Returnable Bottles - My Two Cents

Glad to see more people are considering getting back into the returnable system. We just bought a mould for 16 oz. returnable bottles from OI just so we could stay in the package and had about 40,000 cases made. (They aren't cheap.) Obviously the trend has been to get out of returnables as High Falls, The Lion, Miller, and only a few others still run the package in the U.S.

Download the brewer's alamanac 2007 here to view the percent of packaging in certain containers for a feel of the trend. In 1981 12% of all beer (by volume) was in refillable bottles, now its practically 0%.

http://www.beerinstitute.org/statistics.asp?bid=200

We operate a Dostal & Lowey bottle washer from the 1960s and do about 100+ bottles/min. We are looking at new bottle washers but they are not cheap.

I have just a few suggestions if you are looking at reusing bottles. If you want to come and see a small scale (relatively) returnable bottling line run, you are more than welcome to visit St. Marys, PA.

1. If you haven't heard this word enough times, here it is again... liability. By reusing bottles you have opened yourself yet again to that dreaded word. The bottle manufacturer is responsible for getting you clean bottles for one time use but after that, you that must ensure they aren't going to break in someones hand, cut themselves on a chip on the finish or find a dead cockroach in them.

a. There is a certain larger PA brewery that washes used 12 oz. NR glass and sells them as NRs. There is a reason most 12 oz. bottles say NO REFILL on the bottom of the actually container. OI will not sell them new bottles because they also want nothing to do with the liability of having NR bottles being used more than once. Returnable bottles are thicker, often have special coatings, and are made for multiple uses.

b. We inspect the bottles four times while packaging. (Only two of the stations are solely for bottle inspection.)

i. Guy putting cases onto the line opens the case and picks out any bottles that came back that aren't NRs and sends open case down the line.
ii. Guy manually places bottles on conveyor belt into washer, picking out broken or unsuitable glass.
iii. As bottles come out of the washer, they pass single file in front of a bright light where a worker looks for chips, cracks, scuff marks, anything in the bottle, and things you never imagined. A 45 minute soak in hot caustic removes most things but you'd be surprised as to what makes it through. (This station's sole responsibility is to ensure a good wash and the quality of the glass before it is filled.)
iv. After filling, a worker looks at each bottle as it passes off the filler to catch anything the worker inspecting the glass did not catch. (This station's sole responsibility is to ensure nothing was left in the bottle and that the previous station did not miss anything. Any contaminents are nucleation sites a.k.a. bubbles form around them.)

2. Refilling with the original labels is probably not the best idea. Presentation means a lot. Additionally you want to be able to properly inspect the entire bottle, a label will prevent that.

3. When a customer buys a NR bottle, they expect it to be new. (Unless you plan on selling them as returnables.)

4. It would be great to see a movement toward returnables. They are much more environmentally friendly. (It takes the equivalent of 5 pounds of coal to make a single case (24) of new 12 oz. NR bottles.) We sell our 16 oz. returnables for about the same price as our 12 oz. NRs so we say that by buying returnables, they get 4 oz. free per bottle. The economy of scale plays a huge factor. If you could get a number of brewers on board, it could be a great plan. I invite you to come see a returnable line in action if you have any questions but this is certainly an idea to worth researching.