PET bottles

[Mudcrab]

I've been told PET bottles are good for 6-8 brews before you need to get rid of them. Over my past few brews, I have been having a bit of trouble despite the bottles only being on their 2nd and 3rd cycles.

When I bottle, it seems that about 7-10 days in, a couple of the bottles in the batch will leak - I don't fill them up completely so find it strange that they would overflow. It leads me to think that there are holes within the bottle. The beers don't empty completely so potentially sediment blocks the tiny holes up. 

Anyone had a similar experience to this? Or any suggestions on how to stop/avoid this? Glass bottles seems like the easy solution. 

Cheers

[Harry]

Are they standing up when they are conditioning? Sounds very odd to me.

Glass is the answer unless you want to drop a few hundy on kegs.

Just buy some empty (or full for ease of cleaning) crates from your local bottle store. Cost about $6 each

[Mudcrab]

Yeah they're standing and normally in the cardboard box they come in until it soaks through. 

I should probably just buy some glass bottles. The man cave needs a bit of a spruce up before I get kegs up and running. 

[Pierre Malan]

Likely to be hairline cracks in teh bottom of the bottles.  I used to have batches of bottles that did this, and then had no major issues for ages.

The best solution is to buy a plastic crate that takes 16 bottles.  They stack and if something leaks, it doesn't go everywhere.  

These are the sort of crate I used to use - you can get them from payless plastics, bunnings, etc. http://paylessplastics.kiwi/storage-and-containers/general-storage-...

[Mudcrab]

Good point re storage. I have a few containers that are similar and also stack so will use them. Clean up was a hassle! Cheers

[Pierre Malan]

Happily, they take 16 bottles each at a squeeze, so you can squeeze 24L into the two cases.

By another pleasant coincidence, they transport easily for, say, Christmas holidays, if you prefer this to mass produced beers.