Beer Bottles

A wide range of beer bottles to suit every need

Since brewers first started putting beer into glass bottles at the start of the twentieth century, bottle shapes have undergone constant transformation. Primarily for marketing reasons, companies looked to different shapes to distinguish their brand from other products. Some of the most popular bottle types include:

• Euro bottle: This bottle with a short, conical neck is a classic beer bottle style and is often used for light beers today.
• NRW bottle: This standardised half-litre bottle is slimmer than the Euro bottle and is particularly popular for bottling wheat beers.
• Vichy bottle: This is the smaller version of the NRW bottle.
• Longneck: This elegant cylindrical beer bottle with a long, narrow neck is one of the newer beer bottle shapes – ideal for English pale ale.
• Steinie bottle: This stout 330 ml bottle is particularly shatterproof and is often used for pilsners.

Our online shop offers a range of high-quality beer bottles in various shapes, for example to bottle your craft beer. If you’re a home brewer, you should simply choose the beer bottle shape that you like best.

Why are beer bottles usually brown or green?

Beer is often sold in brown, green or antique green bottles, as these colours block light from entering the bottle. If beer is exposed to strong UV radiation over a long period of time, the bitter hop substances decompose and the flavour changes, resulting in a sulphurous “off” taste. Brown and antique green beer bottles offer the best filtering to prevent this “lightstruck” flavour.

Whether you are looking for an antique green, brown or clear glass bottle for your beer, at World of Bottles you’re sure to find something that suits your fancy.

Perfectly sized bottles for every need

Volume is also an important consideration when choosing the right beer bottle. In most European countries, standard beer bottles have a capacity of 330 ml or 500 ml. However, our range also includes large beer bottles with capacities of more than one litre.

Our shop also offers labels in various sizes for decorating and labelling your beer bottles.

Closure types: swing top or crown cap?

In the past, the swing top was the standard for beer bottles. Today swing top bottles are no longer so widespread, though they are popular with many beer drinkers because of their nostalgic look.

Nowadays most beer bottles are hermetically sealed with crown caps. Crown caps generally have 21 prongs that close firmly around the mouth of the bottle. A bottle opener is usually required to open these bottles.

Are beer bottles sustainable?

Glass is considered an extremely sustainable material because it can be recycled or reused several times. For glass bottles, you have to distinguish between two different systems: single-use and multi-use bottles.

In retail shops, a deposit is collected on all glass bottles. However, once consumers return their empty bottles for the deposit, the different bottle types are handled differently:

• Single-use glass bottles are generally recycled, i.e. used to make new products from glass.
• Multi-use bottles, on the other hand, are thoroughly cleaned and refilled by the bottler. Beer bottles can be reused in this way for many years.

Cleaning beer bottles to ensure optimal hygiene

There are various methods for cleaning beer bottles. In professional companies, large quantities of bottles are cleaned using bottle washing machines. If you’re buying empty beer bottles as an individual, it’s usually sufficient to rinse them once with warm water before bottling. To be on the safe side, you can also disinfect them. Special disinfectants are available for this purpose.

Buy empty beer bottles from World of Bottles

Whether you’re with a professional brewery involved in commercial beer production, or you’re home-brewing for your own consumption, we have the right beer bottles in various shapes and volumes. As there is no minimum order quantity, you can simply order the number of bottles you need. At certain quantities, you can take advantage of attractive bulk discounts.