It doesn’t take long for mold to grow on empty beer bottles. Considering beer bottles get returned for a refund, you have to assume that the brewery will make an effort to reuse as many as possible.

I toured a brewery once and they showed us the big industrial bottle washing machine. They said the bottles get scanned for cracks using a laser, and rejects obviously get tossed. The question is: what about mold, which adheres quite well to the corners of the glass? I wonder if the laser also detects bottles that didn’t get clean. Or if they just figure the temps would kill everything and just be considered safe enough from there.

  • evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Yeah some states have deposits on bottles/cans that you get back through the vending machine thing, but the only bottles that actually get reused are some fancy milk brands.