weevil

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I want to buy a fairly cheep hand held bottle capper and need a bit of advice. Is there anything I need to look out for? Recomended brands? Will it work on beer bottles that I have saved from bought beer?

Parker36

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All the hand held wing cappers are pretty much the same - in bot price and usability. Just make sure it has a magnet. I have both the Red Baron and Black Beauty. Like the Red Baron a little more. As for bottles, just make sure they aren't twist off and most will work (they need that lip about 1/2 - 3/4 inch down). There are threads around mentioning which bottles don't work so well.

Revvy

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Yeah, depending on what homebrewshop or online you order from, most often you pretty much only get on wing capper to choose from. And they all are fine...

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weevil

Recipes 

Thanks for the advice.
I'll check out the bottles I've saved. I live in Portugal so the bottles I have are mostly Sagress and Super Bock which probably are not that known outside of Portugal, so I might not find advice for those brand bottles but I'll try measuring the lip. Thanks again

THart

Recipes 

I broke a few bottles with my balck beauty, I blamed it on the fact that the jaws that grab the bottleneck are uncovered metal. Just as likely it was due to my own clumsiness but now I have one that has a plastic covering on the jaws & I've never broken a bottle. Unfortunatly I don't know the name or brand but if you see a capper with that feature I'd reccomend it over one that has uncovered metal jaws.

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Marko73

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As far as Hand cappers go, I have used both the black beauty and the Red Baron. I personally like the Red Baron a lot more and I have never had any issue with capping.

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homebrewer_99

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Really? What about all the other thousands of capper that haven't broken bottles?

Just pulling your chain. The problem is not the bottles, but the metal plates (clamps) on the capper.

OP: Check the metal clamps on the capper, specifically the cresent cuts. Look at the back side of the cresents to see if the plate has another set of cresents cut into them. Some of them only have 1 set of cresents cut into them, some have 2. The second cresent cuts are for different size bottle necks...I have a picture of the clamps in several posts in the past, one just the other day.

THart: Your clamps (probably) broke the bottles because the clamps were set for a thinner size neck and your bottles were the (slightly) larger ones.

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