To Much Time & Honey On Hand

[ScooterTrash]

To Much Time & Honey On Hand and now it’s time to try my hand at making Mead etc.. I have acquired 10ea Glass 5gal Carboys via bartering. I would like to use recycled wine bottles both cork & screw cap types, I am finding some bottles look a little flimsy (long necks, thin glass) should they be avoided? Any direction appreciated, Thanks

[spiderwrangler]

Too much time & honey on hand? I thought this was a lead in to 'wrong ways to touch yourself at night' (sorry new guy)... The flimsiness of the bottles shouldn't matter too much provided you are packaging still wine that is not going to carbonate. If it was good enough for the original wine producer, it will likely be good enough for you, but if you are looking for new screw on caps to replace the metal ones that came on it (if they are damaged or whatnot), not all the ones available through brew shops fit that well.

[ScooterTrash]

Thanks for the timely response. Sounds like I need to acquire some screw caps from various vendors & try on the various bottles on hand quickly as I have folks saving up bottles and I need to provide some direction for those folks. Targetting 1000 bottles, I have a few plastic 55gal drums I can soak the bottles in to help get the old lables off.

[spiderwrangler]

I had a customer who had a bunch of screwtop wine bottles that didn't fit any of the caps we carried, he ended up going the corking route. However, the screwtop bottles aren't designed to hold a cork, and will be of no use to you if you need to do this too. If you can figure it out now, you can save yourself a lot of labor and headache later.

[ScooterTrash]

Safe to assume the 28mm screw cap generally marketed is primarily for new bottles sold for bottling not recycled bottles with the caveat that the caps may work on some recycled bottles?

[spiderwrangler]

That is my understanding, yes. It isn't an issue of diameter, but of thread spacing.

[Dr. Bubra]

Welcome! Sounds like you're in for a lot of fun with 10 carboys. Keep us posted on the varieties of mead, etc. that you try out & how they turn out!

Dr. B

[hoodie]

Someone from my neck of the woods!