Test Bottles for Capping Before Bottling

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Heineken

Heineken

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I did my first bottling last night. Everything went great except I went to cap a commercial bottle (Pilners Urquell) and found out the neck would not work with my bottle capper. Therefore, 12 of my bottles could not be capped. Luckily, I had only filled one of these bottles before trying to cap unsuccessfully. I would not have wanted to pour back into the bottling bucket.

The good news, I had some extra bottles so I was only about 2 bottles short. Thus, I 'had to' drink a couple of beers so I could reuse the bottles. I had a few Sierra Nevada ESBs which I enjoyed thoroughly while bottling my first batch.

So noobies, make sure you test your bottles before you begin bottling to make sure you can cap them.

Overall, great experience making my first brew. Now the hard part...waiting for carbonation.
 
I believe this has something to do with domestic VS European bottle necks?

BTW - How's that SN ESB? I was going to get some last night but didn't
 
This is so odd to me. I have a wing capper and I have never had a problem capping any bottle at all except obviously twist offs. But no probs with Amstel light bottles or Heini light or Belgians or anything at all.

On occasion a bottle has felt easier than normal to cap but I just cinched a little tighter and I am able to shake them while upside down to no ill effect and they hold carb just fine.
 
Get a bench capper to serve as a backup . . . at an antique shop or flea market. Oldies are fairly common, cost ~$6-7, work perfectly well (though not qu-i-i-i-te as nicely as the new ones). Get yer "collectibles" delivered to yer door via eBay all day long. :)
 
I had a similar issue my first bottling day. Had some import 750ml bottles that failed along with a hobgoblin bottle and another I can't remember. Luckily I had thought it may not work and had enough normal ones pre washed/sanitized.
 
bench capper is ftw. just bought a floor corker too, going to do it cantillon style with a cork and a cap over it for the big brews.
 
+1 for a bench capper - but keep the handheld one as a backup. My bench capper (the Super Agata) is getting worn out after only a year of use. Still, it makes bottling much, much easier.
 
A bench capper uses downward force to cap, whereas the butterfly capper relies on a metal fitting that clamps around the neck of the bottle and secures under the lip. If the lip is too high, you can't put the cap on.
 
I used a bench capper years ago and liked it fine. This time around I just took the wing capper they gave me with the kit. I find I can bottle much faster this way. I line up 6 bottles deep 3 times a foot apart and I am able to cap all 18 bottles in under 2 minutes. Do this 2 1/2 times. I can bottle a 51 bottle batch from starting the priming solution, to sanitizing the bottles, to filling, to capping, to cleaning up the bottling bucket in under an hour now.

EDIT: I reread jharres post and this just does not seem to describe my capper at all. I wonder. Is there a third type maybe? A hybrid of sorts? Because my capper definitely relies on downward force. So much so that sometimes there is a circular mark in the cap where the capper was pushing down. My manual downward force holds the cap in place while the cap edges get bent down around the lip of the bottle.

RERE-edit nevermind. It is how he described. I just never looked closely.
 
hmmm...interesting. On my capper, where the body of the capper meets the neck of the bottle, there is a half circle of metal on each side. When I move the handles in a downward motion, these grip the bottle and then the bell descends and pushes the cap on.

Edit: if I push hard enough on the handles, mine will leave a circular indent as well. I just got to thinking of what you said and technically this is relying on downward pressure from the bell, however it seems to be accomplished by a squeezing motion rather than a simple leaver action of a bench capper.
 
I have both bench and wing style cappers. For the first and only bottling session I've had thus far, I kept both ready at hand to see which I prefer. I was rather surprised to find myself using the wing capper almost exclusively. But still, having the bench capper gives a level of flexibility the wingy thingy can't match, whereas you can cap twist-off bottles (just for fun to see how/if they work), or otherwise unconventional bottle types. I also like having the backup just in case.

In fact, I like having backups for everything that's inexpensive enough to be practical, such as carboy stoppers, airlocks, racking canes, that sorta thing. The antique bench capper set me back $6.36.
 
It's all about the neck ring on the bottles that refuses a wing capper sometimes.I learned this on a batch of corona bottles I had filled when I only had a wing capper.To get the caps crimped in a pinch-crimp them as far as they will go with your wing capper then unscrew the crimping bell from the capper and hammer it over the caps with a rubber mallet.This will crimp them and you won't have to transfer beer to other bottles.
 
This has benn discussed before (more than 4 times that I can remember).

Check the metal clamps (that grab the bottle neck) on your Red Baron Capper. On the backside of the plates some of them have another cresent cut out and some are straight metal. The "other" cresent cut out is for different sided necks. For this reason alone I have 2 cappers, but since I've gotten rid of all my 12 oz bottles I only use one size.

Note the 2 different sizes of the cresent cut out...

Capper-0.jpg
 
Heineken said:
I did my first bottling last night. Everything went great except I went to cap a commercial bottle (Pilners Urquell) and found out the neck would not work with my bottle capper. Therefore, 12 of my bottles could not be capped. Luckily, I had only filled one of these bottles before trying to cap unsuccessfully. I would not have wanted to pour back into the bottling bucket.

The good news, I had some extra bottles so I was only about 2 bottles short. Thus, I 'had to' drink a couple of beers so I could reuse the bottles. I had a few Sierra Nevada ESBs which I enjoyed thoroughly while bottling my first batch.

So noobies, make sure you test your bottles before you begin bottling to make sure you can cap them.

Overall, great experience making my first brew. Now the hard part...waiting for carbonation.
Click to expand...

What kind of brew did you make and the process from start to completion?
 
dontman said:
I used a bench capper years ago and liked it fine. This time around I just took the wing capper they gave me with the kit. I find I can bottle much faster this way. I line up 6 bottles deep 3 times a foot apart and I am able to cap all 18 bottles in under 2 minutes. Do this 2 1/2 times. I can bottle a 51 bottle batch from starting the priming solution, to sanitizing the bottles, to filling, to capping, to cleaning up the bottling bucket in under an hour now.

EDIT: I reread jharres post and this just does not seem to describe my capper at all. I wonder. Is there a third type maybe? A hybrid of sorts? Because my capper definitely relies on downward force. So much so that sometimes there is a circular mark in the cap where the capper was pushing down. My manual downward force holds the cap in place while the cap edges get bent down around the lip of the bottle.

RERE-edit nevermind. It is how he described. I just never looked closely.
Click to expand...

I concur, my wing capper is red, and when it first closes it grabs the neck and then forces the lip up into a metal sleeve that forces the cap (held by a magnet) down onto the lip of the bottle. Works great and was twice the cost of a bench capper and recommended by the LHBS over the bench capper.
 

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