Stubby bottle catastrophe!

Hi Guys,

I just finished bottling up my 2nd brew (a Scottish 60/-) and thought I would bottle up a few in 250ml stubby bottles so as to be able to sample a small amount to assess progress of conditioning. However when I tried to cap one it shattered with a large shard just missing my wrist!

Anybody else had this problem? Anybody know of a source of strong 250ml bottles?

Lesson learnt anyway!

It's not limited to 250mL bottles. I've had a few 12oz(354mL) bottles shatter on capping. It's just due to rough handling and (in)visible stresses in the glass.
You can inspect all your bottles and look for obvious cracks but you won't catch all of them everytime.
Just hold them so they are backlit and rotate the bottle. Bottles with cracks or chips should be discarded.

Had a 12 OZ shatter yesterday as I was bottling. Looked over the rest of the bottles carefilly after that.

Do you use a wing capper or a bench capper?

If it's a wing capper, I might blame the capper before the bottles -- it's easy to get something just a little bit mis-aligned, since you can't really see what's going on at the "business end"; I decapitate a 12-oz longneck every couple of batches with mine.

I just tried to cap a few stubby bottles the other night using my wing capper, and it was damn near impossible. One of my searches online recommended a bench capper instead.

Judging by my experience, I'd probably agree with that.

I have a bench capper and have shattered some regular 12oz bottles before. The ones that shattered were all from the same brand of beer (can't recall which one).

Wing cappers can be adjusted. I had the same thing happen with 12 oz Belgian style bottles.

What style wing capper are you guys using? I've bottled every batch of beer I've made for two years and I've never broken a bottle of any kind. Red Baron capper. I dunno, to me it's just kind of a feel thing. You should never have to press too hard on the "wings."

Interesting stuff. I use a wing capper. Looking at the bottles I have to say that they are pretty thin glass. They housed a very cheap brand of beer so perhaps thats not surprising!

I've bottled conditioned them in my mash tun just in case I have any bottle grenades!

Yeah, finding bottles with decent, somewhat thick glass is kind of important. Just to make sure, they're not twist-off bottles, are they?

Wing cappers grab the bottle and squeeze the cap on. Bench cappers press down on the whole bottle. Thin bottles, or bottles with a less than optimal ring for grabbing, might break when using a wing capper. A bench capper is less likely to break a bottle and is overall a more universal device. I've only had one bottle break with a wing capper and that was when my daughter was helping me cap some beers. The bottle basically exploded. Tiny shards everywhere.

I have a red Emily-style wing capper that came with my starter kit. I didn't know those could be adjusted; how do you do that?

The stubby bottles I'm using/want to use are the Session Lager bottles, the redesign with the standard top instead of twist off.