Carbonation in flip-top bottles vs PET bottles

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axp

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Hi all.

After months of waiting I have sampled my belgian dubbel. It tastes great but I noticed something strange and was hoping some of you guys had opinions.

The beer that was bottled in the PET bottles was perfectly carbonated. The beer in the glass flip top bottles was not.

When I opened some flip top bottles there was a really loud 'pop' and I could see a swirling CO2 cloud at the top of the bottle. I thought great, nicely carbed. But the beer tasted quite flat, certainly not as fizzy as the beer in the PET bottles.

Any ideas why this would be?

Cheers, Andrew.
 
The seals seem fine. If it was just one I would have thought that. But if the seal was incorrect surely I would not get the loud 'pop' and Co2 cloud when I opened them.

I put the priming sugar solution in the bottling bucket and then added the fermented beer so in theory the sugar should be evenly distributed.

This puzzles me.
 
is there a difference in size of bottles... although you added the right amount to the bottleing bucket, the size of the bottle might cause a problem when it comes to carbonation.
 
I suspect that variations in head space might be the culprit. I still don't quite understand all the science behind carbonation, but I believe that the ratio of empty volume to air volume can effect carbonation a bit.
 
The PET bottles were 1 litre in size, the flip-tops are 500ml. I left about an inch headspace in the fliptop bottles and about 1.5 - 2 inch in the PET bottles.

What sort of head space should I be using for the flip-tops?
 
If you fill with a bottling wand, then fill the bottles all the way to the very top. when you remove the bottling wand, the level of the beer will drop and leave about 1 inch of headspace in most bottles. I am not sure if there is a magic amount of headspace that is recommended, but this method has always worked for me.
 
I just made some ginger beer recently and got the same loud POP (as loud as a champagne bottle sound) after a week of bottling (probably not long enough), also the co2 cloud, but the ginger beer was very flat... it had bubbles in it but no carbonation.
 
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