Captured by Porches

First run at washing bottles took far too long, but I knew that we just had to do it in order to figure out how best to change the equipment for efficiency. Only a few bottles had to be left to soak in the alkaline rinse solution (we filled them up from the leftover after setting them aside). Finished everything at 3am, and got home safely!

Need more washing racks so we can go through more bottles with fewer change overs.
Need more surface areas for staging and stacking.
Need rack for sink so bottles drip dry better before boxing.
Need fixed light for easier inspection.


Remove cap, replace gasket, rinse, wash, rinse, inspect, sanitize, inspect, fill, cap, rinse off outside and drain-dry, box, condition, test (hiccup), label, case, load, deliver. Easy.

Liberty Hall is soon to be no more! This Friday they are having an art and craft bazaar, which would be a great place to buy your holiday gifts and support local artisans. CbP will have pints for your enjoyment on site, and BOTTLES TO GO or to gift! We just got our Certificate of Label Approval from the feds for our IPA, and the silkscreen is being burnt right now for the label (like, downstairs in the laundry room under a 150 watt bulb).

Liberty Hall is at 311 N Ivy St here in PDX. Show is this Friday (the 18th) and runs from 4pm to 9pm.

Reuse helps the environment. Glass is horribly inefficient to recycle: recycling glass saves only 30% of the energy that takes to make a bottle from new, raw ingredients. Imagine leaving a standard 60 Watt bulb on for a week, all day and all night: that is how much energy that is saved by a single reuse of one of our 750ml bottles instead of recycling it. Nearly as much energy as it takes to create a new six pack of 12oz bottles.

Reuse helps the local economy. Instead of shipping recycled glass elsewhere to be reformed into new bottles, our bottles will be washed here. Instead of sending our dollars elsewhere to constantly buy new bottles, we will pay our friends and neighbors to wash them.

Reuse involves people in the process of making responsible choices. It demands that they physically set the bottle aside, return it to the store. People will get satisfaction from the tangible act, rather than simply putting their money into a product with environmental claims. The bottle becomes a piece of equipment, a utensil, rather than a piece of (recyclable) garbage.

Other beverage companies are already doing this....

Yesterday we bottled. Two halfie kegs became about fourteen cases of 750ml (25.4 oz, or as the TTB required us to state on the bottle, "One pint, 9.4 fl. oz.") of flip top, reusable bottles. They are carbonating in the glass right now, though I doubt they are doing so very quickly even though they were primed with lager yeast. Gotta get them in a small, heated space for about a week.

The first bottle run went as expected: it took too long! But we had to arrange all the right parts, boil everything, then boil what we forgot. Measuring the priming sugar; finding the goldern priming sugar (I know it is here somewhere!). Ed had to tinker a bit with the bottle washer. He sorted the easy to clean from those destined to be recycled (I had brought out the graveyard of homebrew bottles to test the wash method). But at the end of the day, we knew that next run will be way faster and easier.

...

No, not twist off caps. Don't want to jinx it just yet, but big plans are in the works. The OLCC just gave us the green light for our secret project, a 'back to the future' take on bottling. Our homebrewing friend just got laid off of his job as a union pipefitter. The label submission to the feds is still waiting approval. Availability of sufficient quantity of bottles has been secured. First batch to be destined for glass instead of steel is planned, yeast prop will start on Monday for a Friday brew day. Four retailers have already agreed to carry the product in the method required, and so far no one has said 'no.'

Hint: Did you know that when you recycle a glass bottle, that the melting and reforming of that bottle still takes 70% of the energy as if it were made from new raw materials?