Bottling sour beer

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tkm

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How necessary are champagne style cork and cage bottles for bottling sour beers? Can I get by with regular crown cap bottles, does anybody have any experience with failures?
 
I've made a few sours over the years and have only used regular crown caps. For a true lambic, I would think a cork would add additional flavors, but I haven't bothered with that.
 
As long as the beer is fairly stable you shouldn't have a concern. Using thicker bottles is always a smart precaution just in case. Weizen bottles, stubby Belgian bottles and some champagne bottles can be capped but are thick walled. I use the Belgian 750ml and other champagne bottles but I don't cork with regular corks. I use plastic champagne corks. It's not as nice looking and it's an imperfect solution for the Belgian bottles but it's dirt cheap and works. Some Belgian bottles have too large of mouths and it won't get a good seal but I've had good success with Chimay and Ommegang bottles. I seem to think Unibroue bottles were too wide-mouthed.
 
Standard bottles are fine. Just don't carbonate over 3 volumes.

The corked bottles are thicker glass and can withstand higher pressure (more volumes of CO2).
 

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