Glass/PET bottles

[Shaun Dennis]

New to beer droid and I have my first brew. 

I have the complete bottling kit from Brewart and will use the PET bottles for my first brew. 

I have been reading the posts in the forums and there a lot of talk around people using different things. Mainly PET and Grolsch bottles. 

First question - is there any significant advantage either PET or Glass.

Secondly, it appears to be difficult to get Grolsch bottles, but will any metal swing top bottles do? Like in the link below. 
https://mangrovejacks.com/products/flip-top-bottles-12-x-750ml

Just want to get my facts together for when I buy additional bottles, as I'm intending of doing a few back to back brews to get stock. 
 

Thanks in advance  
 

[Mike A]

The PET bottles are stupid simple bottling, take little effort, no extra gear, especially on first use as you don't have to do any extreme washing.  So for simplicity PET is great and the beer turned out really well so long as you screw the caps on somewhat tight.

So your first question, Significant, not really.  I've used both.  I do notice a difference, I do prefer smaller bottles as I don't often want 750ml of beer in one shot, so 330-375 is a good spot for me generally.  I did notice a difference between glass bottled and PET bottled, they matured at very different rates, I would go so far as to say the PET matured faster.  However also adding to that I didn't do the squeeze the bottle thing before putting the cap on the PET (process to limit oxygen in the bottle).  So could have just been that.  Regardless the beer tasted the same.  Glass should last longer, that's about it.

Second question.  There's a lot of threads on this forum talking about swing tops.  Essentially all coming down to there's the occasional failure with them, mostly to do with the seals.  Some claiming they would never use swing tops again and only go to capping which proves to be more reliable, others claiming putting good quality seals on the bottles and replacing them somewhat often is the best idea.  I personally like the reliability of capping method so I just went for that.

TLDR summary:

• PET good, Glass more reliable long term, no/low O2 issues.
• PET isn't great for long maturation, while they're sealed for O2 with a nylon layer, it's not perfect, only good for keeping beer max 5-6months.
• Swingtops need to be looked after to remain reliable, some can have o2 issues in the long term, rubber isn't perfect for O2 sealing.
• Capping more reliable than swingtops, highly reliable.

So depending on style of beer, if you're going to get into porters/ales/stout, then you may want to look at glass & capping for beers that take 5+months to mature.

[Steve Gyldenvand]

11 hours ago, Mike A said:

Capping more reliable than swingtops, highly reliable.

Spot on. I've really settled almost exclusively on capped glass bottles. I do the occasional howler or growler with screw-on caps, but I check them from time to time and give the cap an extra little twist.

[Shaun Dennis]

Perfect thank you both  

[Mike A]

Capping gear regularly hits FB marketplace as well, so you may be able to get the capper from there, get new caps, they're cheap enough & in bulk everywhere.
I've started using Bundaberg Gingerbeer bottles that I put in PBW overnight to clean & de-label, rince out really well, then sanitise everything with Stellar-San (Star-San by a different brand).  So far no issues and I go through a box a month on average so I usually have a few around.