Did you know that the process of making hot sauce bottles is a complicated and precise one? At Small Axe Peppers, we take a lot of pride in our hot sauce. We carefully source the freshest peppers and use only the highest quality ingredients to create a product that we hope you’ll enjoy. But it’s not just the hot sauce itself that we’re proud of—it’s also the glass bottle that it comes in. In this post, we’ll take a look at the journey of a glass bottle, from manufacturing all the way to shipping.
How Glass Bottles Are Made
The process of making glass hot sauce bottles begins with sand. Yes, that’s right, sand! Sand is melted down and formed into pellets. These pellets are then melted down again and formed into what is called batch. Batch is then placed into a furnace where it is heated until it becomes molten glass.
A metal mold called a parison is then dipped into the molten glass. The parison is blown by air until it takes on the shape of the mold. The neck portion of the bottle is then formed by attaching it to a blowpipe. Once the desired shape has been achieved, the bottle is cooled and annealed.
Annealing is a process of heating and cooling the glass slowly so that it becomes less brittle. This process strengthens the glass and prevents it from breaking easily. After the glass has been annealed, it is inspected for any defects. Defective bottles are then sent back to be melted down and recycled.
After the bottles are made, they’re transported to our factory where they’re washed and inspected. Once they’ve passed our quality control standards, they’re filled with hot sauce and capped. The next step is labeling—and then they’re ready to be shipped!
Shipping Glass Bottles
Shipping glass hot sauce bottles can be a challenge because they are breakable. We take care to pack them securely so that they arrive at their destination safely. Sometimes we send them out on pallets to our wholesale customers. When we ship them directly to customers, we wrap them individually.
Why we use glass bottles and not plastic bottles
We use glass bottles because the process we fill our hot sauce is known as hot fill, which means the hot sauce goes into the bottle at 190 degrees Fahrenheit. We don’t want to melt a thin layer of plastic into our hot sauce, so for this reason we use glass bottles. Glass bottles are so important is because they can withstand high temperatures. If we were to use plastic bottles, there’s a good chance that they would start to melt and contaminate the hot sauce.
Additionally, glass hot sauce bottles are important because they are recyclable and reusable. We care about being environmentally friendly, so we want to make sure that our packaging doesn’t end up in a landfill. Glass bottles can be recycled and reused over and over again, which helps to reduce our carbon footprint.
We hope you enjoyed learning about the journey of a glass bottle! Here at Small Axe Peppers, we take a lot of care in sourcing and packaging our product so that you can enjoy it to the fullest. If you have any questions about our hot sauce or anything else, feel free to reach out to us—we’d love to hear from you.