Tea

I'd like to add to Chris' post about refrigerating fake liquor made with tea and other additives. I was in "Pack of Lies" where I was required to have a drink or two. The liquor was faked with tea. First weekend was fine. The second weekend, the props person used the prepared bottle from the previous weekend that was stored backstage. During my drinking scene, the other actor poured the drink, handed me the glass, and I took a sip. Then I looked at my glass. Horror of horrors, I saw some goo floating on the surface. There was no way I could spit out the drink. At that moment, I chose death rather than dishonor and just swallowed! Fortunately, the goo was probably some innocent mold that possibly prevented me from catching a cold that winter, but that's another story. The moral is -- refrigerate before and AFTER use, or mix a new batch every day. And never -- repeat, never -- replace fake liquor with real liquor as a joke. It ain't a joke. But that's also another story.

Many shows I've either directed or acted in required opening a bottle of champagne in view of the audience.  A trick we used quite successfully was re-filling a empty champagne bottle with ginger ale and then, just before corking it, dropping in a half-tablet of Alka-Seltzer into it.  Wrapping the cork in heavy stationery foil adds to the illusion of a "new" bottle. 

When the bottle is opened, the extra carbonation provided by the Alka-Seltzer creates just the right "pop" and often is accompanied by the rush of liquid.  The bottle needs to be tricked this way before every performance as the carbonation tends not to last overnight. 

Needless to say, this is MUCH cheaper than using a fresh bottle every night.  For pink champagne, substitute Cherry 7-Up for the ginger ale.

Screw top beer bottles?

All ours here are crown caps or rip top!

Chookas

Crown caps are the old fashioned bottle caps that you use a bottle opener on. Rip top, I assume, is a can with a pull tab, though the Gaafa may have to correct me on that.

You can buy plain brown beer bottles, crown caps and a capper from a local home brew shop or one online. Then fill the bottles with ginger ale or whatever and experiment. You can print out your own labels on any computer. As for the screw caps that are used on most US beer bottles today, some brew shops carry them, but I've never used them and have no idea how easy (or difficult) they'd be to put on.