Bottles for Trippel

Has anyone tried bottling with the champagne style bottles? Are there any pitfalls one needs to be aware of? Know of any good sources for these bottles?

Champagne bottles would be great because they can hold more pressure than the typical beer bottles. If you want to carbonate your beer to 3 volumes of CO2, which is to style with Belgian beers, than this would be the way to go. I think you can get the bottles at any beer/wine store, they might be pricier but they are good quality and will make you product look very pro. I use 750ml wine bottles for my Flanders red ales and am very happy with them. The thing is you have to get the proper corks for the bottles, I know champagne bottles take certain corks, but the corks are very good quality and will keep the beer from becoming oxidized for a long time.

That should do the trick... I'd imagine it'll be difficult to find brown champagne bottles, but I've got some time while that trippel sits in secondary. Hopefully this way I can avoid any gushers after bottling.

how will champagne bottles prevent gushers?

I normally use the brown 750 ml Belgian beer bottles.


I have in the past, used capable champagne bottles. I cork, Cap over the cork and dip in bottle wax. Below is an example of the beers I brewed for my sister-in-law's wedding.

If you want a champagne bottle with a crown cap it shouldn't cost to much as some bottle can be capped with 29mm crowns and a replacement 29mm bell is available to switch out for the standard 26mm bell. If you want a champagne bottle with a champagne style cork and a wire bail your going to want to buy(rent/borrow) a very good floor corker. Specifically there is a Italian floor corker with brass compression jaws that works better than the Portuguese floor corker. The thing to look for is to make sure the place that the cork exits the corker into the bottle has a large enough opening that after the top of the cork expands it can still come out of the corker.

Northerbrewer sells the 29mm crowns and the replacement bells

Morebeer has the Belgian style bottles that take a cork (and are brown) as well as corkers/corks. They might have the 29mm crowns as well, didn't check.

Most online shops will likely have products and equipment for one or both of these methods.

malkore said:

how will champagne bottles prevent gushers?

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I figured the champagne setup would handle a little more pressure than the standard capped 12oz bottles. There's really not much logic behind it.

(nevin) said:

I figured the champagne setup would handle a little more pressure than the standard capped 12oz bottles.

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Oh yeah, champagne bottles will handle quite a bit more pressure than regular 12oz bottles. There should be no problems with gushers unless you carbonate to a very, very volume or get a contaminant.

You might be able to score champagne bottles from wedding reception halls. THey go through lots of bubbly and usually just throw the bottles out. Thats where i get mine.

rpucci said:

You might be able to score champagne bottles from wedding reception halls. THey go through lots of bubbly and usually just throw the bottles out. Thats where i get mine.

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ooh good call, I'll definitely have to check that one out. I guess I'll need to go ahead and start another batch and plan to bottle it just after new years.

Iordz said:

Oh yeah, champagne bottles will handle quite a bit more pressure than regular 12oz bottles. There should be no problems with gushers unless you carbonate to a very, very volume or get a contaminant.

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exactly. volume of the bottle doesn't affect 'gushers' or no gushers...its the quantity of priming sugar, or bottling before its finished fermenting (so again creates too much fermentable sugar in the bottle).

lack of headspace can cause gushers too, but if you use a bottle filling wand, it'll displace the right amount of beer to give you good headspace.

and of course good sanitizing will pretty much prevent a contaminent that takes fermentation lower than the 'proper' final gravity.

rpucci said:

You might be able to score champagne bottles from wedding reception halls. THey go through lots of bubbly and usually just throw the bottles out. Thats where i get mine.

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Definately a good source. I attended a wedding this summer and asked the servers if I could take the empties. They were more than happy to have me take them. Less for them to pick up, and the caterer did not have to deal with disposal (no refund for wine or champagne bottles where I am). I scored almost 2 cases and they were brown bottles that were etched on the outside which makes them look black. Cannot remember the brand but they are definately cool bottles. They take the 29 mm caps but that is no problem. One thing I will suggest is that a bench capper is probably a better idea than a wing capper. i have a wing capper and it did the job but, it is now kind of trashed and won't work too well on normal bottles anymore.

malkore said:

exactly. volume of the bottle doesn't affect 'gushers' or no gushers...its the quantity of priming sugar, or bottling before its finished fermenting (so again creates too much fermentable sugar in the bottle).

lack of headspace can cause gushers too, but if you use a bottle filling wand, it'll displace the right amount of beer to give you good headspace.

and of course good sanitizing will pretty much prevent a contaminent that takes fermentation lower than the 'proper' final gravity.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I use a filling wand, and I'm pretty diligent about sanitation (no issues thus far, knock on wood) but the recipe I have calls for more sugar at bottling than I would normally use (1.25 cups in a 5 gal. batch) hence the worry about exploding bottles. OH yeah, and I'll be throwing some fresh yeast when priming as well.

Start drinking a 750 ml bottle of ommegang every other day until you have enough. Buy some corks and have at it. That's my suggestion - I always hate buying/scrounging for empty bottles. Much more fun to "empty" them yourself.

Actually I've emptied a few chimay bottles this week for that very reason

anybody have a source for champagine corks. Morbeer has good quality corks (so they say), but they don't have the traditional style that comes on the belgian bottles.

Here's the website for the lbhs I frequent, I'm planning on running up there this weekend to verify If the corks they have will work on the Belgian style bottles.
http://www.homebrewhq.com/ProductDetails.aspx?productID=1468

how many belgian bottles would you need for a 5 gl batch of trippel? do you even need the belgian bottles for the trippel?

I'd need about 19 bottles (750 ml). I don't NEED Belgian bottles but considering the brew I would prefer them.

well.. I checked out the LHBS mentioned above, the champagne corks they have are the plastic type. No surprise there really, a quick online search didn't turn up many either. The plastic corks seem to be too narrow in diameter for the Chimay bottle. I'd like to avoid plastic corks and champagne bottles, but it seems to be a much more cost effective option.