ottawa foodies

Just wondering if anyone knows how they process and clean bottles for beer. You return them, and then do they distribute the exact bottle types back the plants and they process their own cleaning procedures or what? We usually buy the cheapest light beer, and for a while it was PC light, and last time I noticed a gross green (possibly a leaf?) thing floating in bottom of the glass...gross!!! I wonder how they clean the bottles...

I imagine something more industrial but similar to a bar glass cleaner is used

www.barglasswasherworld.com

As far as the green thing floating, reuse is an 'open' system, i.e., you open the bottle and there is anything that can get inserted between then and return; that means it's possible for something to get passed over because it's somehow avoided being properly sanitized or whatever got inserted was just so statistically unlikely to happen that the system wasn't designed with it in mind.

There is caselaw dating back decades concerning things in bottles that weren't supposed to be, starting with a famous snail in, Donoghue v Stevenson. The fact of the matter is that a re-use system doesn't significantly increase the chance of that happening.

Learn to look at what you're going to put in your mouth before you do and you'll likely avoid getting anything gross in there.

I'm pretty sure it is caustic soda that gets used, and yeah, statistically it is a pretty amazingly low chance of happening. Especially since they have an electronic eye system to scan the bottles afterwards to detect gunk in them. But stuff still gets through, unfortunately.

And I'm pretty sure it is up to each brewery to clean their own bottles after they get them back from the return program. So if you wanted to boycott that brewer because of your discovery, you'd also of course want to find out who brews PC under contract, and boycott their beers too. I think it used to be Brick Brewing some time ago, but am not sure about today. Full disclosure : I am a Brick stockholder. So please find out for sure before boycotting them - especially because they make so many really awesome beers!

FORMOSA rulez

Brick is the bomb - Waterloo Dark!

Do they actually reuse the bottles? I was under the quite possibly mistaken impresssion that the bottles just got crushed and made into new bottles... and haven't been actually recycled since the days of the stubby. I've certainly heard bottles getting broken at the beer store when the person is taking the empties to the back.

When they introduced wine bottle deposits/returns in Ontario I saw a news story explaining the new program. They went 'behind the scenes' at a Beer Store and they showed the employees smashing all the bottles (beer and wine) that were returned. I guess it makes sense. It's more efficient to truck around loads of crushed glass than it would be to pack and ship loads of empties.

as a university student, i worked in the beer store warehouse on bank st (this would be around 1992). my job was to sort through the beer bottles, put them in boxes - all green bottles in one, all clear in another, and then they were sent off for cleaning. we never smashed bottles on purpose, but as you can imagine the state of the boxes that some empties come back in, you would go to lift a box and all the bottles would fall out the bottom. Or the giant skid of empties would have a weak point and a stack of bottles would fall over. it happened regularly.

i am not sure what is done now. it was actually a good student job, it paid exceptionally well and the shifts were flexible. you just wouldn't believe the things we saw crammed into beer bottles. imagine the worst....

I read somewhere that they're designed for refilling 16 times, they definitely reuse them.

www.thebeerstore.ca

Regular Canadian beer bottles get washed and refilled (which is "re-used" Pete, not "re-cycled"). The imports and wine bottles get smashed and then melted down to make new bottles (that is "re-cycled")

That would be my confusion then Zym. Most of mine at the time would have been imports and thus destined for the smash bin.

They crush beau's bottles for nothing!
www.ottawaxpress.ca

The Beer Store's every move from what they stock to how they market justifies breaking up this monopoly. In the past their decisions have been clearly seeded in an anti-competitive origin and similarly targeted independent/micro breweries including Heritage here in Ottawa. www.heritagebrewing.com/

A bit OT - Speaking of Heritage - as per the reports in the news and directly from their website, they've relocated to a more central facility: Heritage Brewing is now open at our new location at 866 Campbell Ave. in Ottawa. Drop in and say hello.