Is it the bottle or the capper?

I was bottling some Pale Ale today and began having trouble capping some of bottles while others capped with no problem. The bottles that gave me trouble were shorter and had a little bit more slender neck. I am using a hand held wing type capper. Would a bench top capper work on these bottles or do I need to stop buying Dos Equis. Thanks for your help.

Well, the one 6 pack of XX Amber bottles I tried to reuse wouldn't take to capping, either. The openings were too small. I'm using a typical wing capper.

This has been discussed before also.

Check the metal plates on your capper. The part that grabs the neck of the bottle. Do they slide out? If they do you'll notice that one end of the cresent cut out is smaller than the other end...or the distance from the end to the cresent is longer.

This means that you have an adjustable clamp set. One for normal sized necks and one for smaller/narrower necks.

Hope this helps.

It's probably the bottle and not the capper. I've been dissappointed when trying to reuse some commercial bottles, such as Guinness, Heineken, et al that won't fit. It's also better to test them while they are empty, so you won't have to dump the beer out of them into a bottle that CAN be capped. Of course, don't forget to check if they are twist off--if they are, that is your problem.

Edit: I didn't know about that trick with the metal parts. will have to try that. thanks homebrewer99.

desiderata said:

Edit: I didn't know about that trick with the metal parts. will have to try that. thanks homebrewer99.

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Not all of them are switchable. You can tell if the metal parts have cresents cut out on both ends. Some only have cresents on one end and they won't work.

Good luck.

I tried a search before posting, but could'nt find anything pertaining to this question. I checked my capper and its not adjustable. Thanks for the advice, guess I'll have to buy another capper. I do'nt want the bottle to be the deciding factor in which beer I buy.

Last summer I purchased some equipment from a guy in PA so I ended up with doubles and triples of lots of gear.

I have 2 wing cappers. One is set for large necks and the other for thin necks.