Beer Forum

Most bottles we use are the amber color. The Sapphire bottles are nearly black. They are crown capped, ie pry off. For keeping out the skunky stuff over time from lights, do you think these are good to go for homebrewing? I just bought a 6pk of it and it's a decent crisp lager, no skunky, but it's 6% which I'm not really a fan of. If I can use these for homebrewing, I'll bite the bullet and go buy two full cases of them just for the bottles.

Why not just test them?

Sacrifice a few bottles by putting them in direct sunlight for a couple weeks then tasting the results. You might want to do a couple control bottles (amber) with the same beer in them to compare.
If they truly are better light blockers then they will not suffer from skunkiness and they'll be great bottles for homebrew.

I'm going to do that with my next batch of beer, but wondering if anyone else has used them before. They take a crown cap, so they should be able to withstand the pressure for bottle conditioning, right?

Yes, they will be fine for "standard" beers - anything you normally carbonate to less than about 3.25 volumes (ie, I'd do hefeweizens in them but not some of the really highly carbonated Belgians).

I bottle all the time using commercial bottles and they work great. The vast majority of bottles coming into competitions are re-used commercial bottles.

these are cool...I'm going to look for them

My favorite bottles to reuse are Anchor's...they have a cool shape and the labels come off pretty easily in hot water

For highly carbonated stuff I use Orval and Duvel bottles...their labels come off quite easily too and make for a great presentation for sours and belgian stuff

Cheers