Black Beauty vs Red Baron

Is there a difference?

I picked up a BB and I really don't care for it. The caps can get held by the magnet crooked and wind up deforming while capping.

I thought it might be a good idea to pick one up with my gift card.. but.. ugh.

Wondering if the RB might be better.

I'm not giving up my bench capper

HopSong said:

Is there a difference?

I picked up a BB and I really don't care for it. The caps can get held by the magnet crooked and wind up deforming while capping.

I thought it might be a good idea to pick one up with my gift card.. but.. ugh.

Wondering if the RB might be better.

I'm not giving up my bench capper

Click to expand...

If you have a bench capper, should have picked up a spare auto siphon.

Have two already.

Yeah, the BB sucks. The RB is much, much better. Keep it in the car with a bag of caps in case you need to resolve any "open container" issues on short notice.

I started with the red baron & used it a couple years. Then the bell kinda stretched out. I bought the super agata bench capper & never looked back.

I have the Red Baron, it's bottled at least 1000 bottles and still hangin' in there. I recently bought the Agata (not the Super Agata, the regular one). Not impressed. Under pressure its column bends, causing the cap to be crimped a bit to the side. The guy at my LHBS insisted it was the "super" model, but a few weeks after I bought it, I looked it up online and found it was the cheaper version, though I paid a full $45 for it. I lost track of the receipt, so can't return it. The two look very similar at first glance, but this one is obviously lighter-duty.

I have gone back to the Red Baron.

The regular bench capper has the black adjuster button on the slide. The super agata I have dosen't. They sent me the wrong one & had to contact them & send it back to get the super agata I ordered. fine so far.

Just moved to kegging but after bottling 30 batches, 1600+ bottles my RB is still going strong. Never one issue of a broken bottle or loose cap.

unionrdr said:

The regular bench capper has the black adjuster button on the slide. The super agata I have dosen't. They sent me the wrong one & had to contact them & send it back to get the super agata I ordered. fine so far.

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Yep, mine has the black button. Since I no longer have the sales receipt, maybe I'll try to sell it on CL. Interestingly, the LHBS' website shows the Super Agata, with a pic of the correct one. But when I went in and asked for one, what they brought me turned out to be the non-super version. At the time, I didn't know what the differences were and had no reason to suspect. The differences in appearance between the two are subtle. But the non-super is very lightweight and kind of flimsy.

I'll just keep using the RB, and maybe some day when I feel like blowing some dough, I'll get a Colonna.

My super agata was $38 from Midwest,one dollar cheaper than the one with the black button.

Interesting how a thread can go to something totally different

HopSong said:

Interesting how a thread can go to something totally different

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When the OP's question has been directly answered by a chorus of several people, all that's left to do is branch out.

But yeah, I did sort of hijack the thread. Guilty as charged.

I will steer it back and say in summary that the Red Baron is the best <$20 capper you're going to find. The thing is damn near bulletproof.