How do you bottle a product at home?!
I want to bottle a home-made product and would like advice on doing so. I prefer glass bottles to plastic, and I'm wondering how to seal them. I'm vaguely familiar with the canning process often used for glass jars, so I wondered if this is similar.
Also, I'm trying to find a good source to purchase said bottles. Many I seem to fine leave little room for any potential profit margin, and on top of that, many have plastic lids, and I would prefer metal. It would just fit better with the nature of the product and the store it will be sold in.
Any information would be helpful and appreciated.
Answers:
Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
You didn't specify what you're bottling. Since you'll be selling them to a store, I'll just assume that you're not bottling your home brew.
If it's something like hot sauce, then you probably want to stay away from metal caps. Even lined caps. Hot sauce caps get gummed up with dried hot sauce over time. Any of the acids in the hot sauce that touch the metal cap will cause a reaction. Either discoloration or rust, depending on the material. Not attractive.
If it's something like barbecue sauce, you'll likely be OK with a metal cap unless your Q sauce is vinegar based. If it is, then you need a plastic cap. I haven't looked into bottle prices lately, but I know that there is a lot of competition out there, so just check out the major bottle manufacturers on Google and go from there.
Bottling BBQ sauce, or infused oils, or salsa or the like is similar to glass jar canning like you mentioned. It goes in hot, you screw on your cap, and it creates a vacuum and an air tight seal as it cools. Hot sauce doesn't need to be hot packed because of the vinegar content.
After it cools, you'll need to put a plastic shrink band on it. You usually get the shrink bands from your bottle supplier. You'll need a heat gun, but a hairdryer will work in a pinch.
You don't want to be filling 1000 bottles by hand with a funnel. It will take you all day. That's fine for starting out, but you'll probably want to invest in a liquid filler eventually. You don't have to spend $5000 for one if this is just a side business. You can get by with a hobby filler for around $500. Here's one: http://handyfiller.com/ Of course, if you make it big and your stuff is selling like hotcakes, THEN you buy the $5000 filler that can fill several thousand per day and hire some kid to fill bottles all day while you're out fishing.
That's all I've got. I hope I helped. Good luck to you!
are you in the US? Ball mason jars from wal-mart or Big Lots