Living Well on a Reduced Income by Cestrian Pimpernel - HTML preview

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Bottles

If you get into homebrew seriously a new problem will arise. Bottles! Yes bottles. I raid a bottle bank in a park and ride. Suppose you want clear bottles. Usually there are at least two bottle banks of each kind: clear, green and brown. Choose the more accessible one. When the bottles are high enough to reach take what you can. Put any bottles you don’t want in the secondary bottle bank. Fill your boots while you can because at some point they will be emptied and you won’t be able to reach anything.

Soak you bottles in a bucket of water. It helps them to stay sunken if you fill them with water too. Some labels float off the next day and some are a bit harder. You can always take them back to the bottle bank. Stoppers can be different sizes and are usually smaller than corks. The bigger necked, cork friendly, bottles should be used for wine. The smaller necked bottles can be used for spirits and closed with a stopper. The stoppers can be reused whilst the corks cannot. For that extra flourish you can fit a shrink capsule using boiling water or steam.

If some nice person has put the screw top back on the bottle before putting it in the bottle bank it can be used for your own daily use.

Due to a shortage of cork screw tops have taken over completely. The thread is still visible through the capsule. That doesn't look so good so you should save the bottles without screw thread for best.

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A cork and slightly different size caps

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A corking machine

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Little bottles are great if you can get them.

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Bottles that match the contents should be used when possible.

Labels are for home brew that you are particularly proud of.

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I made six to fit on a piece of A4. There is my name "cestrian pimpernel" and space to write what's in the bottle. The labels can be made more shiny, if you can be bothered, by spraying it a few times with hair spray. The best glue is milk. Yes really. Seeing as making your own spirits is illegal I don’t label my spirits. I don’t want a visit from a customs and excise officer with a milk crate full of my own bottles.