Carbonator Caps

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Big10Seaner

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I recently tried to make some rootbeer using the extract then adding yeast and sugar, but I was worried about the 2 liters exploding on me. I ended up opening one of them too early, and it just seemed hard to judge exactly when they were done by the hardness of the bottles. How exactly do the carbonator caps work? I'm thinking of buying one. Do they work over time or can you carbonate quickly?
 
I recently tried to make some rootbeer using the extract then adding yeast and sugar, but I was worried about the 2 liters exploding on me. I ended up opening one of them too early, and it just seemed hard to judge exactly when they were done by the hardness of the bottles. How exactly do the carbonator caps work? I'm thinking of buying one. Do they work over time or can you carbonate quickly?

I have no idea, but I put my rootbeer into a keg. If you got the CO2 setup anyways, might aswell buy a reconditioned keg to dedicate to it.
 
Never done soda, but carbonate water all the time. Fill the bottle about 3/4. Squeeze to remove all the air and put the Carbonator Cap on. Charge with about 30 lbs. Shake the heck out of it. Charge and shake till you get desired level of carbonation.
 
All a carbonator cap is is a gas connector on a screw top. At 30 psi & cold soda, you can carbonate in about 5 minutes. Once it is carbonated, put the regular cap back on.

Be very certain your CO2 line has a check-valve in it.
 
Thanks guys- next root beer I do will either be kegged or I'll use a carbonator cap. I'm thinking I want to stick to smaller batches of 1-2 gallons at a time, it could take a long time to empty a keg of root beer.
 
Here are a couple of sites with instructions on making homemade caps:

http://www.brewboard.com/index.php?showtopic=47610

http://www.truetex.com/carbonation.htm

I never made one mysefl and just paid the $12 for one at my LHBS. I only have one cap, but that is enough because unlike with beer, you can use a regular cap once you carbonate the soda, and just recharge it as needed. They are also great for recharging any store bought flat soda.
 
You might consider making concentrate. Just mix the extract & sugar with enough water to fill a 2L bottle. Assuming your recipe is for 4 gallons, then you can put one cup of concentrate in a 2L bottle, chill & carbonate. That way, you'll only have a bottle of concentrate & a 'working' bottle of soda in the fridge. Add a bottle of water to pre-chill & you'll have a steady supply.
 
All a carbonator cap is is a gas connector on a screw top. At 30 psi & cold soda, you can carbonate in about 5 minutes. Once it is carbonated, put the regular cap back on.

Be very certain your CO2 line has a check-valve in it.

I thought all the CO2 would escape before you had a chance to switch caps and had heard of people freezing bottles before swapping caps. Does the cap swapping tip also work for beer?
 
I thought all the CO2 would escape before you had a chance to switch caps and had heard of people freezing bottles before swapping caps. Does the cap swapping tip also work for beer?

Sorry for such a lengthy response, but I have been down this road before, so here's my experience.

Once the soda is sufficiently carbed, switching caps is like opening and closing a bottle of soda from the store, which people do all the time with 2 liter bottles. Eventually it will go flat, but you can recarb it again if necessary. Like soda from the store, the colder it is whenever you open it, the less C02 you'll lose. Freezing it won't help- although the colder it is the less co2 it will lose, freezing a carbonated liquid will force out the co2, so if you open it while it is frozen, it will be largely flat when it thaws out.

Beer is trickier because every time you open it, you run the risk of oxidizing it. In other words, although you can open and close soda repeatedly- as we all have done with 2 liter bottles of coke, this doesn't work as well with beer and wine. If you carb beer in a 2-liter bottle, you need to make sure to squeeze the bottle and force out all of the air before you put on the carbonator cap. That way, once you shake it to carbonate it, you won't be oxidizing it in the process. I sometimes draw off a 2 liter of beer as a test sample before kegging and carb it with the carbonator cap. I leave the cap on it, and whenever I open it, I make sure to squeeze out the 02, replace the carbonator cap, and then hook it back up to the co2 tank and reinflate the bottle at 10 psi or whatever I have as my keg serving pressure. The purpose with hooking it back up is not so much to carbonate but to keep it from oxidizing. With this method, it keeps longer than say a 40 ouncer you have opened, but it is not very efficient because you use more co2 this way, not to mention that it'll oxidize eventually even with this method because whenever you pour the beer, o2 is coming into the bottle to replace the beer that is pouring out. The more you drink, the more head space you have, and thus, the more co2 you'll need to use each time. I don't mind this for a small sample that I consume in a few days, but if I did this with an entire batch, I would be constantly refilling my tank. You could forego replacing he o2 each time you open it, but as we all know from kegger parties with a hand pump, it will skunk very quickly.

Theoretically, you could do smaller quanities in 20 oz plastic bottles and replace the cap with regular caps just after carbing, which I have tried. The risk of oxidation would be smaller because co2 is heavier than air, but once you carb a 2 liter bottle with a carbonator cap, you'll see that this method is far too labor intensive. I tried this once and found that although carbing a 2 liter is much quicker than force carbing a keg, there is a significant amount of shaking involved. Thus, if you used 20 oz bottles for a batch of beer of any size, it will be far more labor intensive than either kegging or bottling with priming sugar. In sum, I have found that although force carbing beer in a 2 liter is nice for sampling a test amount before kegging or bottling, the carbonator-cap method is too labor intensive for less than 2-liters, and 2 liter bottles of beer are just too large in general, so you end up wasting beer because it oxidizes before you finish it, or you waste a lot of co2 to try and keep it fresh. I can finish one 2 liter bottle before it oxidizes, but doing that more than occasionally would reak havoc on my health and probably my job and marriage. That's a lot of pressure each time I open a beer (no pun intended).
 
they work quickly
to save money and have more flexible fittings i make my own with a tire stem and 2L bottle cap
and i use an ultraflate plus bike charger
perfect for small batches
 
Hi all,

I got 5 of these caps in a recent order..............one of em is leaky :( but the other 4 are great...............I get to satisfy my impatient urge to sample early....no waiting for the priming sugar method.......but....I have just set my CO2 tank on 30PSI and got the still-flat beer cold inside a 1 liter seltzer bottle (less/no flavor compared to soda and more manageable volume to finish) and give it about 4 pops of pressure, disconnect and shake, adn repeat..........................IS 30PSI GOOD OR LESS (OR UP TO THE 40PSI THAT THE CAP IS MAX-RATED AT)??????????????

Thanks!
_John
 
Too bad there isn't a cap like this you can buy that would let you both carbonate the beverage and dispense it without losing CO2. it would be great if you could keep a co2 line connected to the cap while serving, so that it would stay fully carbonated until the bottle is empty.
 

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