Careful with that wing capper!

Maybe I need a bench capper. One bottle is brand new, one is recycled.



-Joe

That has never happened with my bench capper

That has never happened with my wing capper

that happened to me about four years ago when I started brewing and bottled with a wing capper. I was bottling with a buddy, and if you are just slightly askew with it, it can torque the top, and break the glass a lot easier than you might think.

Now, I keg for the most part, and if I do need to bottle, I have my bench capper ready, and no worries about the piston not going straight down with that. I don't think the bench capper was too much money, and it definitely helps with the safety.

I break one bottle with my wing capper probably ever 3 or four times I bottle. I attribute it to my brute strength

your an animal. no need to "kill it". its not your lug nuts keeping the wheels on the car at 130 mph!

I did that last bottling session. What pissed me off was that I was bottling gift bottles.

Joe...check your metal clamping plates to see if they are reversable. They are if they will have another set of arcs cut into them on the backside.

Just pop them out, turn the 180 and re-insert them.

From the pictures it looks like you used the smaller arcs on a large neck bottle and crushed the neck.

i did that once with the wing capper

the smaller size is the size for 12 oz bottles. the other wont even grab the neck. perhaps his are stamped out of tolerance.

nostalgia said:

Maybe I need a bench capper. One bottle is brand new, one is recycled. -Joe

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Moved to a bench capper (and kegging) because of broken bottles. My red wing capper may have been scoring the bottles (just a guess). The caps went on fine, but when the bottles were opened the bottle would break at the neck. Not a safe thing after you've had a few brews!

mordantly said:

the smaller size is the size for 12 oz bottles. the other wont even grab the neck. perhaps his are stamped out of tolerance.

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The smaller size works fine for many different bottle sizes, and is supposed to be for bottles with a 26mm cap, not for a specific volume. I've found that the larger 29mm side works better for some 12 oz bottles with larger necks.

To the OP, check the surface of the neck grabbers where they contact the bottle. I had one that had a burr on it that was occasionally making a crunching sound, and creating a small scratch in the glass. I sanded and polished it smooth, and now it works fine.

Wow! I've only been at this for a year, but I bottled 30 batches this year and not a single bottle has broken. I guess splitting the job with SWMBO and her doing the capping has been a benefit. No need to brute strength it folks! I've yet to have a cap come off or witness a loss in pressure.

I kegged my first beer two days ago. I don't know if I've ever been happier with a hobby. When does the joy fade?

AnOldUR said:

Moved to a bench capper (and kegging) because of broken bottles. My red wing capper may have been scoring the bottles (just a guess). The caps went on fine, but when the bottles were opened the bottle would break at the neck. Not a safe thing after you've had a few brews!

Click to expand...

This happens to me with some regularity. I keg, so I only bottle beers I'm taking somewhere, but it still happens to about 1 out of every 20-30 bottles though. I guess I need a bench capper, plus then i could cork belgians too.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. This is the first time this has happened to me in the ~100 bottles I've capped. However, I recently bought a Black Beauty Capper from Brewmaster's Warehouse, so it apparently handles a little differently from the red metal one I was used to.

I checked on the inserts that grip the neck. They are not removable, nor do they have any burrs on them. I guess I just squoze too hard

-Joe

Funny enough, I had basically the opposite happen to me the other day. I had a capped cider bottle that I wanted to see if I could reuse, and tried to cap it with my red wing capper.

What I didn't think of was that I had just pulled it out of a garage that was somewhere around -10F at the time. The bottle survived, but part of the capper shattered.

nostalgia said:

I guess I just squoze too hard

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"Squoze"! Sweet word!

nostalgia said:

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. This is the first time this has happened to me in the ~100 bottles I've capped. However, I recently bought a Black Beauty Capper from Brewmaster's Warehouse, so it apparently handles a little differently from the red metal one I was used to.

I checked on the inserts that grip the neck. They are not removable, nor do they have any burrs on them. I guess I just squoze too hard

-Joe

Click to expand...

Yeah, I already knew the black beauty one wasn't reversible.