Old Timey Ingenuity.

[Brewing_Brad]

G'day all,

While I was visiting the parental units the other weekend, I managed to coerce to my old man into remeniscing about his childhood. Growing up in the bush, the youngest of 10, he has some fantastic stories of "making do".

Any way, short story long, the topic of preserving food came up and apparently my grandmother used to cut the tops off beer bottles (with a burning kero soaked string) and use them as preserving jars. She'd fill 'em up with jam or whatever, cover the opening with wax paper and wrap a band around it to keep it in place. My grandfather helped out by keeping her in a regular supply of bottles, which was very thoughtful of him.

It got me to thinking; every year I end up with more fruit and veg than I have jars...why not give the old beer bottle jar a go!

I attemtped to do the old burning string trick, but with dismal and almost dangerous results. So I jumped on the interweb and saw this video and have now ordered myself one of these (no affiliation yadda yadda but, I can tell you that Ephrem is a top bloke! I say this only because he upgraded my order for free and anyone who does anything for free is pretty tops in my books!).

So getting back on topic; has anyone tried this before with any success? Does anyone have any other old timey ways of "upcycling" as the trendy kids call it these days?

Cheers,
Brad

 

[MarkBastard]

Why not just use beer caps?

 

[Brewing_Brad]

Why not just use beer caps?

The idea is to make the hole wider so that you fit bigger things in, like gurkins and beetroot etc. I guess you could bottle your jams, as long as you made them runny enough. A bit hard to get the old knife down the neck of the bottle otherwise.

We do bottle our tomato sauces though.

Cheers,
Brad

 

[MarkBastard]

Ah okay, so you take the neck off I guess. Fair enough.

 

[Brewing_Brad]

Ah okay, so you take the neck off I guess. Fair enough.

Sorry, that wasn't clear was it. Here's an example with a wine glass (picture = 1000 words etc):

 

[petesbrew]

Make spag bol, use Pasta sauace jar
Save glass jars, and amazingly they even come with a lid.
Simple really. (I love that saying almost as much as "shits n giggles")

 

[Airgead]

We recycle old jam jars for jam, old sauce bottles for sauce etc.

Threw a few jars of jam at our neighbours and now they give us all their empties. Easy as.

We buy new lids though. Plenty of places online for that but many people recycle the lids as well.

If you seal with waxed paper you need to polish the neck really well to ensure a proper seal.. and you can't get the vacuum seal thing happening.

Cheers
Dave

P.S... And what do I use my old beer and wine bottles for? Beer and wine...

 

[Bribie G]

When I was a kid, entire suburbs consisted of houses made from kero tins. The richer people would make McMansions, including double lock up horse stables, from kero tins as a personal statement about their disposable income (>15) B)