2 Litre Plastic Pop Bottles?
this is my first day in this forum, but i have brewed a few batchs. my very first batch, i bottled in 2 liter plastin bottles. they worked like a charm i used 2 teaspoons of sugar to carbonate each, and they seamed to be just fine. i agree, they are not a long term plan, but they do work nice still for the extra liters of beer that dont fit into your carboy, or keg. im kinda a beer pig, so getting rid of 2 - 4 liters of beer in a day isnt a problem. just my ecperiance so far, and nice to find another friendly forum. 
It's a moot point if you can't seal them properly, but if you were taking them to a party or something, the 2 litre plastic bottles would be fairly light weight, they wouldn't break, plus when you were finished you could collapse them and recycle them.
Take them camping!
I have been experimenting with using plastic for bottling beer. Some bottles leak and some do not leak. The original Red Rubber Grolsch Gaskets are 1” in diameter and fit well in the plastic caps. I find that this gasket fixes the plastic bottle leak problem.
I just ordered 100 from http://www.homebrewit.com/contact for $4.95 plus shipping.
HI,all - I can tell you that i've been brewing in 2-litre plastic pop bottles here in the UK with standard coke /lemonade bottles for several years and have NEVER had any problems with beer contamination;loss of pressure or bottles bursting (plastic "flexes" with the pressure?).I clean/sterilize them with standard stuff before filling them(siphoning) from the brew bucket.Ive also re-used them again occasionally with no problems.I definitely find them convenient,as with 3 kids running around i've always got a steady stream of pop bottle supplies at hand.Its also handy to chill a bottle in the fridge for icy refreshment!
Plastic pop bottles.......can you use them and do they leave your beer flat and explode and smell like skunk..........well to answer those questions.......I use the 20 Oz. brown A&W Root Beer bottles to test my first couple of beers in. 1. You can tell if your young beer is carbonating....the plastic bottle gets hard. 2. Lids They sell replacement lids for about $5 bucks for 24 and I've used several bottle lids 4 or 5 times. 3. Light struck....If you use the root beer bottles they are brown....don't confuse commercial beers in clear bottles with being light struck....a lot of them have chemical compounds in them that prevents skunking....4. oxidation....if your pop was oxidated you wouldn't drink it either....I've kept the plastic ones around for several months with no noticeable effects 5. Will the lids hold....if the plastic blows up be glad it wasn't glass!!! 6. Sanitation just rinse them out real good and don't scratch them with a bottle brush, sanitize as usual and it will be fine!!!........last of all I always bottle one or two in plastic to keep an eye on carbonation and to have a portable bottle or two that I can get rid of to a friend....they tend not to bring your good glass bottles back....and now you don't have to ask them to.
GOODBREWING
FWIW, I make ginger beer in 2 liter bottles all the time. My kids love it. The bottles hold pressure excellently (are more than typical bottle conditioning/carbination pressure.) But, would plastic detract from the whole homebrew experience? I think so, but that is aesthetic and not scientific...
I would beg to differ, politely of course, with dead guy and car boy on the suitability of plastic bottles for bottling and enjoying homebrew. As was stated, light and oxygen are the enemy - not plastic. There are plenty of ways to shield your tastiest reserves from both light and oxygen. First of all, if soda bottles hold their 55-60PSI contents, they'll certainly hold your 30-40PSI beer product. Ambient air does contain oxygen, true. But at 15PSI, it's not going to work its way into a bottle pressurized at 30PSI. As for light, keep your product out of the light and you'll do fine. In the fridge, basement or closet all will do nicely.
As to why to use plastic bottles in the first place, well, I guess convenience is the biggie. Secondary is that if you reuse them, it keeps them out-a-the landfill. They don't break when clanged together or dropped. That can be handy. But for me, I reuse them because I'm a cheap spendthrift on a budget. I don't have a bottler or capping machine.
MikeSpike wrote:
As to why to use plastic bottles in the first place, well, I guess convenience is the biggie. Secondary is that if you reuse them, it keeps them out-a-the landfill. They don't break when clanged together or dropped. That can be handy. But for me, I reuse them because I'm a cheap spendthrift on a budget. I don't have a bottler or capping machine.
Mike, thanks for rekindling this topic, for an avid user of plastic bottles I have a couple of questions.
I have never used them before but do have a carbonator cap- I used it to clean my keg lines by filling a bottle w/ sanitizer and squeezing it through. Works very well, but now I just half fill a keg with sanitizer and round robin pushing it through each line.
Are you naturally carbing the beer with a bottle fermentation? Or do you keg your beer, then bottle off the keg? Or are you filling the bottles with flat beer during bottling time then hooking up CO2 through the cap? What do you use to seal the bottles with- the stock soda cap? Once you carbonate, and remove the carbonator cap, is there any gushing? Pardon my ignorance, its just that I have this cap and I have only cleaned my keg lines twice since I have had it!
I guess I answered some of my own questions by reading your other post. Looks like you carb w/ dry ice tabs. Interesting.
Thirsty, I actually do my beer fine tuning and my mineral water manufacturing/bottling differently. Will try to answer your Q's here...
Your comments...
I have never used them before but do have a carbonator cap- I used it to clean my keg lines by filling a bottle w/ sanitizer and squeezing it through. Works very well, but now I just half fill a keg with sanitizer and round robin pushing it through each line.
Are you naturally carbing the beer with a bottle fermentation? Or do you keg your beer, then bottle off the keg? Or are you filling the bottles with flat beer during bottling time then hooking up CO2 through the cap? What do you use to seal the bottles with- the stock soda cap? Once you carbonate, and remove the carbonator cap, is there any gushing? Pardon my ignorance, its just that I have this cap and I have only cleaned my keg lines twice since I have had it!
I have one of "The Carbonators". It works great. Trouble is - I needed 51! I couldn't afford buying them. So I got the Fizz Giz caps instead, from FizzGiz dot com. They're only a couple of bucks and are replacement guaranteed for life. I use them on larger form factor bulk storage 2-liter polyethylene teraphthalate soda bottles because they're free and easily obtained. Two neighbors will easily furnish you a lifetime supply of bottles in no more than a season.
As for my process, you hit the nail on the head, I fill bottles with flat beer and inject co2 thru the cap. I don't remove the Fizz Giz caps. They're cheap. I leave them on thru the consumption stage, then drop them in warm water in a large bowl with a teaspoon of clorox in it, rinse & dry. Yeast imparts a nice flavor that I do not get with this method. But I'm accustomed to my own brew and I like it. Stock soda bottle caps seal great, but they don't have valves, so I don't use them. The Fizz Giz is a stock soda bottle cap with a valve that's of a translucent material with no taste or detectable odor. Since I don't remove the caps until consumption time, gushing or accompanying pressure loss is not a problem for me.