Pet Bottle Storage

[reviled]

What is the max amount of time you guys would suggest leaving beer for in PET bottles? A year? More/less?

 

[Katherine]

No longer then a year. I guess it would help were you stored them but defiantly not in a hot shed.

But they do loose carbonation after a year.

 

[reviled]

defiantly not in a hot shed.

:unsure: Really? Why would it make a difference? Extra fermentation?

My shed wont get all that hot, maybe pushing 25 in the summer, but ive boarded up the windows so no sun/light gets in at all...

 

[Bribie G]

My shed wont get all that hot, maybe pushing 25 in the summer.........

Sounds like my shed in the winter

On sunday my two laddies and my drinking mate came round and we cracked some reference bottles from my first four brews when I started off in June. They were perfect. IMHO if you are brewing for everyday quaffing and hit on a few good recipes why would you want to brew anything that takes months and months to mature? I look at six weeks max in the PET. I expect the keggers on the forum turn their stock over a lot quicker than that and don't have any complaints.

If I decided to go into complex Trippels etc that need months and months of maturing however, I'd probably go glass or get in a couple of batches of Grolsch swingies.

 

[reviled]

Dont get me wrong, I start drinking most of my beers after 4-6 weeks, but I like to keep some for an amount of time cos they allways taste alot better when I eventually crack them open...

Its just ive read about plastecides or some crap leeching into the beer after a certain amount of time, I just want to know how long can I leave beer in PET for without it tasting like ****? :icon_vomit:

 

[Katherine]

Coca cola goes wrong after a year in a pet bottle....

 

[reviled]

Coca cola goes wrong after a year in a pet bottle....

I thought coke never went off?

To be honest, I dont see any of my beers lasting 12 months, maybe, but I doubt it

 

[Katherine]

Its looses carbonation through the plastic.

6 months seems like a good distance for a pet bottle.

 

[Bribie G]

Waaaay back in the 80s in the UK PET bottles (five pint and seven pint :icon_drunk: ) were very popular and they used to out-do each other "new eight pint bottle for the price of six pints" etc. On my last visit I noticed that there was less beer in PETs - with companies like inBev controlling the trade now the swing is back to four-packs of 500ml cans. Stubbies as we know them are not used in the UK for megaswill 'slabs' although many 'special' brews are available in glass such as Newkie Broon, Wells Bombardier, whatever.

However PET now has a very long and proven history and apart from maybe being permeable to CO2 in the long term I don't know of any flavour concerns. Here in the Antipodes we tend to think of PET as a new fangled and doubtful product. Not so; the reason we are now starting to use it in Australia for beer is because, until recently (unlike other parts of the world) we always had access to a steady supply of 750 ml tallie bottles. However they are becoming less and less common, and most people would baulk at having to cap sixty stubbies, hence the trend to PET.

 

[Katherine]

Bribie what is your expenience in the length of time you can store a home brew beer in a PET bottle.?

 

[discoloop]

Lately, I've been racing through a few brews in PET that are about 12 to 18 months old. I'm racing because they seem to be getting flatter and flatter. I agree with the above suggestion of about 6 months. Possibly up to 9 at a stretch, after then you'll lose carbonation.

If you want to store your beers, use glass. A lesson I learned the hard way!

 

[reviled]

Lately, I've been racing through a few brews in PET that are about 12 to 18 months old. I'm racing because they seem to be getting flatter and flatter. I agree with the above suggestion of about 6 months. Possibly up to 9 at a stretch, after then you'll lose carbonation.

If you want to store your beers, use glass. A lesson I learned the hard way!

Or carb it more than expected :lol: Jokes...

So apart from the lack of carbonation, any funny tastes or anything?

 

[jaytee]

As much as anything it's the quality of beer that you put in the bottle.

If it ain't good, it won't taste good out of glass or PET in 6, 9 or 12 months time.

 

[Katherine]

Or carb it more than expected :lol: Jokes...

So apart from the lack of carbonation, any funny tastes or anything?

Only a week ago I opened a PET bottle of IPA I brewed over a year ago. A year ago it was an okay beer, drinkable. Un drinkable now!

 

[reviled]

Only a week ago I opened a PET bottle of IPA I brewed over a year ago. A year ago it was an okay beer, drinkable. Un drinkable now!

So is that just cos of carbonation or did it taste funny?

 

[Bribie G]

Bribie what is your expenience in the length of time you can store a home brew beer in a PET bottle.?

Brew 001 dates from late June and was fine. I've put down a Xmas Stout bottled early September so it will be approaching 4 months by Xmas / New year. So that's the limit of my experience with beer. However when we moved house a couple of years ago I found a 1.25 of cola right at the back of the pantry cupboard that would have to be over a year old and it was ok.
I suppose the question is, what effect does alcohol have on PET long term?

Quote from an American Website:

Beer -- A New Market with New Requirements

Beer is often seen as an extension of the CSD [carbonated soft drink] market, but also often requires heat fill and barrier qualities. Because the technologies used to make beer bottles are varied and the applications differ (cold filled or pasteurised), finding a common denominator is difficult. Making a bottle to meet the desired requirements has been the most important factor. The types of PET beer bottles typically used are: non-tunnel pasteurised, one way tunnel pasteurised and returnable/refillable bottles.

Barrier: Beer needs higher performance in both CO2 and O2 barriers compared to PET used in CSD applications. The level required depends on the type of beer, container size, distribution channels and environmental conditions (storage time, temperature and humidity levels). Improvements in barrier properties can be obtained via coatings, creating mutli-layer bottles and scavengers.

Colour, clarity and UV protection: Beyond the barrier properties, most beers also need to be protected from UV light. Protection can be obtained via colorants or UV additives, which can be added to the PET at the injection stage. Because of the varied requirements for beer, resins must be chosen which provide an adequate barrier, UV protection and clarity.

Strength: Beer bottles do need strength in order to maintain the CO2 pressure over a wide range of temperatures including pasteurisation. IVs in the .80 to .84 range are normally favoured. Beer bottles also tend to use champagne bases rather than footed or petaloid? bases. In all of the above cases, the resource efficiency of PET - due to its light weight - is one of the essential reasons why it is used with these consumer drink products. Not only does the consumer benefit, but the transportation costs and energy consumption in delivery are decreased due to its weight. Because PET bottles are so much lighter than alternatives, a truck can carry 60% more of the beverage and 80% less packaging ?a fuel saving of 40% and less air pollution.

​

So I guess I've answered my own question - I would tend personally to use my current CSD PET bottles but don't count on getting more than maybe six months out of a brew, however the Coopers style PET are obviously the enhanced ones referred to in the article above and could be used for long term storage.

 

[barry2]

I use the Coopers brown 740ml PET bottles.I taste a brew after 2 weeks in the bottle. Then they are left and drunk after 3 to 6 months in the bottle.I have never had a problem with loss of carbonation (over 50 brews now).
At present the brew in the fridge is a Coopers IPA plus DME and 1kg of grains and Amarillo hops.It has been 5 months in the bottle and my best brew to date. A shame that it will all be gone sometime next month.

 

[buttersd70]

Have used both soft drink and beer type pets....I never let the softdrink ones get over 6 months, so I couldn't answer that one. But as far as the coopers brand pets, what I have found is;

9 months or less, all were fine.
>9 months, a couple of flat ones here and there.
12 months, about a third totally flat, about a third a bit flat, about a third OK.
16 months - found a couple of bottles I forgot I had, k&k with spec grains. A nice drop at 12 months, but those that still had carb (albeit lower than it had been) tasted crap at 16 months. Sherry like flavours that were not present at the 12 month mark, I presume it to be oxidation resulting from the pet leeching.

The interesting thing is that from 9-12 months, those that were flat were totally flat, and those that weren't, were perfectly carbed. I would have thought that they would have gradually flattened equally.

 

[Bribie G]

Bump: I notice that another PET thread got started and Butters pointed it to this one.

It's about a month since I posted here and some of my 'archive' bottles from previous brews are hitting four months. I just went out and felt them up and they are all rock solid. However I don't intend ever keeping anything for over three months at the best of times.

I did a Xmas stout a couple of months ago with the intention of maturing it for 4 months before the big day. It's a Coopers Toucan + 1kg LDME + 750g DEX and it's rocket fuel. To my surprise it's now very very drinkable :icon_drunk: so if I make it again I'll just give it the 2 months.

Slightly off topic: When I get into AG after Christmas (prolly BIAB) I will look at doing some really long storage beers like real pilseners etc and will definitely go Grolsch 500 ml swingtops. Does anyone know what the carton prices run out to? I'll quite happily drink my way through a few cartons of my favourite bike riding fuel when I cycled all round the Netherlands when I was a laddie. However no way would I quaff five cartons of VB tallies NOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Also I seem to remember that in Holland in those days Grolschies seemed bigger, maybe 750ml or 660 or thereabouts? Is there still a larger size made, anyone know?

 

[Osangar]

I started using PET bottles while I began to build my glass collection. I still use them, but only when I know the beer wont be around for long.

Several tests have proved to me that side by side glass is a lot better that PET both with holding carbonation and taste. I have no idea why PET beer taste inferior to glass, but it does.