Recycle Like a Pro

• Home brewers aren't the only ones who reuse their beer bottles. Large brewers often collect and reuse empty bottles. In some cases, this simply means sterilizing and reusing bottles. However, bottles embossed with the manufacturer's name or other types of "one-way" bottles are simply crushed into glass pellets to be reused. While you're unlikely crush bottles to make new ones, cleaning and reusing is well within the reach of the home brewer.

Keep It Clean

• Clean bottles are essential to successful bottling. If your bottle isn't free from contaminants, you could wind up spoiling the flavor of your brew. Fill the bottles with warm water to stop them from floating, and then put them in the sink and fill it with hot water. Let them soak for a few hours, and then scrub off their labels. Scrub the bottle inside and out with a bottle brush. Finally, add sanitizer to a fresh sink full of water, let the bottles sit in it for a few minutes and then thoroughly rinse them. Alternatively, after you've removed the labels, just wash the bottles in a dishwasher.

Putting the Cap on Things

• Once you've put your almost-finished beer into the reused bottles, it's time to cap them. Even if you're reusing beer bottles, you'll need to apply new caps. You can use either standard bottle caps or twist-off caps. The only exception is if you're lucky enough to have a lot of bottles with attached swing tops; these stoppers can be reused, allowing you to skip the entire capping step.

Bottling Cautions

• Although bottling your own beer is relatively simple, watch out for a few things when reusing bottles. Choose brown bottles if possible; they'll minimize your beer's exposure to sunlight, preventing it from skunking. When using bottles designed for twist-off caps, be careful when capping. If your capper clamps around the neck of the bottle, you may find that the glass fractures; one-way, twist-off bottles tend to have very thin glass in this area.