waxing beer bottle caps?

So when I was at the homebrew store buying the ingredients for my tripel, I was asking about methods for aging it in the bottles for a year or so. He recommended I buy some wine bottle wax, and wax the top of the beer bottles, caps and all. he said put the wax in an empty soup can, melt it down and dip the bottle top in...

does anyone else recommend this? im not adverse to trying it or anything, only going to do 6 and a tall bottle, but is it not recommended or anything?

I have never had any issues with aging without wax. I just had a barley wine from about 2 years ago and it was fine.

But wax does not sound like a bad idea. if nothing else it sounds like fun so i may try it.

there's NO technical reason to wax properly capped beer bottles. other than the LHBS gets to sell you more stuff.

malkore said:

there's NO reason to wax properly capped beer bottles. other than the LHBS gets to sell you more stuff.

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And if it's done right it looks cool!

The directions you got from your LHBS are fine. I would add:

1: melt the wax in a empty tuna fish canor something so you can just kleave it inthere until the next batch.

2: Do it out doors with a grille of some kind, I got tagged for some of my deposit when I moved out of this joint:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f38/ris-swap-poindexters-brews-62424/

They sell O2 caps that are supposed to help keep the O2 out of your bottles. These might be nice to prevent oxidation for long-term storage. The wax might not be a bad idea, but I doubt it's really necessary. Might look cool on the right bottle.

My favorite Whiskey comes with a waxed cap!

Arkador said:

My favorite Whiskey comes with a waxed cap!

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same as some favorite beers

i think it makes a difference in long term storage, or maybe it just gives me peace of mind.. plus it makes it easier to resist temptation of cracking open something you don't have a lot of.

MTpilot said:

same as some favorite beers

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I was at their brewery a few years ago!
I am from a dairy farming family. We always stayed at
My Friend's House
and toured
New Glarus Brewing Company
and
Wisconsin Wineries: Wollersheim Winery, Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin
While in town for the World Dairy Expo in Madison!

I wonder how you get the thicker wax like the Maker's Mark bottle. Just get it barely melted?

I am sure that a couple of factors are concidered.
1: Quality of wax
2: Temp
3: Beeswax vs manmade
4: Coloring/thickening agents

probably mulitple layers as well?
Dip it let it dry, dip it let it dry, so on.

I think wax dipped bottle look really cool. Some guys did it for the 80808 RIS swap and it just upped the cool factor. If I ever do a Huge RIS I will probably bottle it in bombers and wax it. Would make it really nice for gift's too.

IrregularPulse said:

probably mulitple layers as well?
Dip it let it dry, dip it let it dry, so on.

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I know Makers Mark is a single dip Process. I got to see them dipping it on a tour i took there in 2004. to the touch, it has an almost plastic like texture, so it is obviously not pure wax.

IrregularPulse said:

probably mulitple layers as well?
Dip it let it dry, dip it let it dry, so on.

I think wax dipped bottle look really cool. Some guys did it for the 80808 RIS swap and it just upped the cool factor. If I ever do a Huge RIS I will probably bottle it in bombers and wax it. Would make it really nice for gift's too.

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No its not multiple dipped. Watched an episode on Whiskey and saw them dipping the Makers Mark bottles. They were dipped by hand and it was a one time, very quick dip. Must be the wax or the additives used in the wax. Probably a very tightly controlled temp also.

You don't need wax on your caps as the caps provide sufficient seal and there is not any cork in the seal that needs to be protected.

Also O2 caps do not prevent oxygen from entering the bottle any better than do normal caps. The difference is when activated by water the O2 caps absorb O2 from the headspace. This is done by capping then tipping the bottles upside down to wet the caps. The O2 absorbing is short lived but the bottles are sealed so no more should enter.

Craig

The O2 absorbing is short lived but the bottles are sealed so no more should enter.

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I think it was confirmed to be a slow process taking 3-6 days and thus it's fine to soak caps in sanitizer before capping. There was a thread about it.

CBBaron said:

No its not multiple dipped. Watched an episode on Whiskey and saw them dipping the Makers Mark bottles. They were dipped by hand and it was a one time, very quick dip. Must be the wax or the additives used in the wax. Probably a very tightly controlled temp also.
Craig

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Good info, I was guessing.

Ok so I just spent an inordinate amount of time looking up how to make bottle sealing wax (or just sealing wax). Lots of talk of shellac/beeswax/rosin etc that would be cool to get in to, but expensive.

When looking at people doing seals on letters, a lot will use colored hot glue. I'm thinking of buying a pack of hot-glue sticks, either colored or color it myself and give it a shot with bottles. I'm hoping it will stick OK and look great but not be too hard to peal off.... Or I could just buy the bottle wax the sell at the homebrew shops.

conpewter said:

Ok so I just spent an inordinate amount of time looking up how to make bottle sealing wax (or just sealing wax). Lots of talk of shellac/beeswax/rosin etc that would be cool to get in to, but expensive.

When looking at people doing seals on letters, a lot will use colored hot glue. I'm thinking of buying a pack of hot-glue sticks, either colored or color it myself and give it a shot with bottles. I'm hoping it will stick OK and look great but not be too hard to peal off.... Or I could just buy the bottle wax the sell at the homebrew shops.

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What are we looking at as "too expensive"? Price per batch of 50 bottles estimate?

I guess I meant too expensive as more than buying the bottle wax they sell at the homebrew stores. Most of the recipes I saw were based of shellac, which I saw for $30 online per lb. but could be found cheaper.

conpewter said:

Ok so I just spent an inordinate amount of time looking up how to make bottle sealing wax (or just sealing wax). Lots of talk of shellac/beeswax/rosin etc that would be cool to get in to, but expensive.

When looking at people doing seals on letters, a lot will use colored hot glue. I'm thinking of buying a pack of hot-glue sticks, either colored or color it myself and give it a shot with bottles. I'm hoping it will stick OK and look great but not be too hard to peal off.... Or I could just buy the bottle wax the sell at the homebrew shops.

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Interestingly, Makers Mark sent me a letter sealing kit for Christmas with a wax stick like a candle, and a little doohickey to press the logo into the wax. I love being on their Christmas list. Knob Creek sent me a ice cube tray that makes ice cubes in the shape of knob creek bottles.

conpewter said:

Ok so I just spent an inordinate amount of time looking up how to make bottle sealing wax (or just sealing wax). Lots of talk of shellac/beeswax/rosin etc that would be cool to get in to, but expensive.

When looking at people doing seals on letters, a lot will use colored hot glue. I'm thinking of buying a pack of hot-glue sticks, either colored or color it myself and give it a shot with bottles. I'm hoping it will stick OK and look great but not be too hard to peal off.... Or I could just buy the bottle wax the sell at the homebrew shops.

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Have you, or has anyone else tried this process at all? I'd be very interested to know how it turned out, and if you have any recommendations. I'm going to make a Christmas Brew and I'd like to bottle and label it very nicely, then wax the bottle cap. Ideally, the wax would look identical to the Maker's Mark bottle, but I'm willing to bet that their process is pretty well controlled, and may be very difficult to duplicate.

The wax dipped bottles from Deschutes are cool, but the wax is a total PAIN to get off to open the bottle.

I went looking for hot glue sticks today. I did find crayons, I plan on throwing crayons in while I'm melting the glue sticks, I think this will give me good color and get me closer to the consistency I found on the Dark Lord bottle I opened. It didn't stick to the glass much when I peeled it off the bottle. It bent some but did break when bent at about a 90 degree angle. I'll add some more wax to the mix during testing.

I couldn't find glue sticks at Target, but they had 24 packs of crayons for 30 cents each I figure I may need more than one crayon of each color so I got 4 packs. I plan to brew up Graff tonight, so if I have extra time I can test this on a few bottles of something.

I have a couple beers coming up soon that I would like to do this too and I am very interested to hear your results. Those beads from the homebrew vendors are pretty expensive.

Can't for the life of me remember what it was, but I remember opening a wax sealed beer bottle that had a small wooden disk with some letters or a logo...maybe the year? branded into it and pressed into the wax while it was still warm. The effect, you can imagine, was very cool.

Did some experiments with my idea to use hot glue
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/hot-glue-bottle-wax-experiment-127485/#post1425378

conpewter said:

Did some experiments with my idea to use hot glue
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/hot-glue-bottle-wax-experiment-127485/#post1425378

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Just checked out the above thread, VERY COOL! Thanks again!

conpewter said:

Did some experiments with my idea to use hot glue
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/hot-glue-bottle-wax-experiment-127485/#post1425378

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thanks for updating this thread. I want to bottle a 12pack and dip them now, just so i can make people go OooOO when i give them a bottle.

Thanks guys! It was a fun experiment, just wish I'd gone to direct flame sooner, 2 hours of boiling water was annoying.

A good trick for waxing bottles to make opening them easier is this.

Take a peice of cotton string, (waxed is best because it sticks to itself) and cut it into foot-long (maybe a bit less, figure out what works for you) peices.

Wrap the string around the neck of the bottle in the crack between the glass and the cap a couple times.

leave a bit of a tail sticking out that you can grab onto

dip in wax and allow to cool.

When you want to open the bottle, just pull the string and open as normal, it cuts the wax for you.

Are the beads at the LHBS able to be heated up, applied and then reheated later after cooling to make a second run? Or do you have to use it all at once?

FailureDrill said:

Are the beads at the LHBS able to be heated up, applied and then reheated later after cooling to make a second run? Or do you have to use it all at once?

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They can be reused. I believe it is recommended to heat them up in a soup can or something similar. That way it is a self contained mess and can be stored away and heated up again for future use.

I decided to mess around with some of the bottle sealing wax my LHBS owner gave me a couple weeks ago. Figured if it was free I might as well try it out. I read a couple wine making websites about sealing bottles and watched a short video and decided to just dive in and try it out.

I started by heating about a quart of water in a 2qt pot, taking a chicken broth can out of the recycling bin and cutting the top off and created a double boiler type of contraption. Then I added in some of the blocks of wax that I broke up. It didn't take long for the wax to start melting but there seemed to always be a clump of partially melted wax at the very bottom of the can.


It took a few bottles to get the hang of it. In the video I watched the guy would spin his bottles to get the wax to drip off neatly so I started trying that out and noticed I was getting cool little artsy-farsty spirals. The shape and tightness of the spiral depended on how fast I spun the bottle and the angle that I held the bottle as I pulled it out of the wax and started spinning.


A single dip in the wax left the crimps on the caps showing so I decided to go with a double dip. I didn't do all the bottles though as I was just experimenting. Maybe I'll do the rest of them or save the wax when I bottle my RIS. Here's what they all looked like when I was done. Not the best but I think they look pretty cool.

That is some cool ****!

Do you have a link for the video you watched?

DRxAndy said:

i think it makes a difference in long term storage, or maybe it just gives me peace of mind.. plus it makes it easier to resist temptation of cracking open something you don't have a lot of.

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That's a good point.

As I understand it, waxing completely blocks out o2. Even if you cap properly, some will still seep in. I plan on waxing some of my 08 mead (finally going to bottle it tonight) and what I don't give away in the Westy swap, ie bottles I want to save for years.

As one of the science guys in my club pointed out, there will always be some oxidation as the oxygen in the water changes (I zoned out a bit but I trust the guy ). Plus, yeah, it looks cool. I want to get a stamp to press into the top of the caps, or maybe to the front. I think it's pretty easy to make your own.

Hey Sig... can we get some cat for lunch??


Anyway, I just put together a RIS to brew this weekend as a wedding gift for a friend and I plan on waxing/labeling.

Anyone know what colors are available? My LHBS only has red and gold.

chumprock said:

Hey Sig... can we get some cat for lunch??


Anyway, I just put together a RIS to brew this weekend as a wedding gift for a friend and I plan on waxing/labeling.

Anyone know what colors are available? My LHBS only has red and gold.

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Depends on the wholesaler the LHBS buys from. One of the ones I'm familiar with (Crosby & Baker) lists the following in their public(without price information) catalog: black, blue, gold, burgundy red, holiday red. If that is who your LHBS orders from they could get any of those.

Edit: Another wholesaler(brewmasterinc.com) with a public (again no prices) catalog lists: Black, Blue, Burgundy, Gold, Green, Purple, Holiday Red, and Silver.