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Bottle it

19 February 2000

Cheap and tacky, or wild and wacky: that’s the future of beer bottles, now
that brewers have overcome the problems with using ordinary plastic bottles.
Plastic may be cheap, light, strong and versatile, but it also makes beer taste
horrible. Oxygen molecules seep through the plastic and make beer go stale. But
one solution is to line plastic bottles with an impermeable layer of a liquid
crystal polymer, called Superex. Developed by Superex Polymer in Waltham,
Massachusetts, the molecules align to form a thin layer that makes the beer
last.

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