Bottle-agnostic swingtops

http://trade.taobao.com/trade/detail/tradeSnap.htm?spm=a1z09.2.9.154.JCdEhQ&tradeID=442259557347260

The link is there mostly for the pictures. I bought a dozen of them as a trial run.

Basically, there's a stainless steel O-ring that tightens around the bottle neck with a screw and nut, and the swingtop cage locks into that ring. With the round-capped OEM nuts, I can't tighten them enough to bottle carb (the ring slips up around the first ridge on the neck), but I'll be replacing them with open-ended nuts in a day or two.

Does anybody have any experience with these? If they can't carb, I'll keep them around for things like rice wine and oils and sauces in the kitchen, which don't need pressure-rated seals, but I'm hoping they'll be capable of bottle carbonation. If they work out, it's a lot cheaper than buying swingtop bottles.

Wow thats neat ive often wondered if such a thing was out there. i guess that answers that. keep us informed on how the new nuts work

Interesting, watching for out come.

Wonder if there is a source closer to home for me.

A couple days ago I harvested a batch of very moldy rice wine. Getting mold on the rice is not uncommon as there are molds (some beneficial) in a lot of rice wine yeasts, but that batch was cut above (I think it had started to develop intelligent life). I bottled it in one of these bottles, still only loosely-fastened with the capped nuts, and swing the top closed. In the morning, after roughly 12 hours, it was so heavily-pressurized that the liquid was in the shape of a dome in the neck. When I popped it open to avoid bombing, I got rice wine everywhere. Incidentally, although it smelled good at harvest time, the wine stank out of the bottle and I ended up dumping it. Still, that's proof that, even loosely-fastened, these swingtops can hold pressure in the short term.

The same afternoon my replacement nuts came in the mail. Fully-tightened with the grenade-pin ring acting as a 1-2mm spacer, the o-ring still moves a little ways up the ridge on the neck when capped, but not as much as before, meaning I get a tighter seal.

I'll be bottling a stout at a modest carbonation level this coming weekend and I'll try one or two of these on some Stone longnecks, some local Snow half-liters, and some local 250mL soda bottles and see what we get. Unfortunately, that means we're 3-4 weeks from any good results, but that's how we roll in this hobby - patience is the name of the game.

I imagine these are probably available from one of the US-friendly AliBaba (Taobao) portals, if not locally in the US somewhere. The issue, if they're out there, is finding them; I'm not really certain what a seller would call these in English, maybe "DIY Swingtop" or something like that.

Check out bottom of page
https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/i...a46df664c2a9a01777b0f02b9c5&keyword=Swing+top
Also check out brouwland.de I'd expect they have them

Larso said:

Check out bottom of page
https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/i...a46df664c2a9a01777b0f02b9c5&keyword=Swing+top
Also check out brouwland.de I'd expect they have them

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Yeah, that's a different take on the idea. Clearly those DIY swingtops would have to be tested separately from what I'm using, since they're formed differently and may be either more- or less-reliable, but there's a good chance those bands+replacement cages and stoppers would get the job done.

Larso said:

Check out bottom of page
https://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/i...a46df664c2a9a01777b0f02b9c5&keyword=Swing+top
Also check out brouwland.de I'd expect they have them

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Those look weak to me. pushing a metal strip through then folding back over and being such a soft metal. i could be wrong. has anyone tried them? Dragon what are the one you use made of?

I've seen at a not-so-local LHBS where I can get replacement swing tops, so I've thought of drilling holes in the sides of an oetiker clamp and doing something along these lines, but I haven't tested it yet. I don't have a clamp tool and I would be afraid of clamping too tightly.

Gar said:

Those look weak to me. pushing a metal strip through then folding back over and being such a soft metal. i could be wrong. has anyone tried them? Dragon what are the one you use made of?

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Can't talk much since I don't know the type of metal but I've seen clamps like that in industrial apps stand up to way more pressure than a beer bottle.

Gar said:

Those look weak to me. pushing a metal strip through then folding back over and being such a soft metal. i could be wrong. has anyone tried them? Dragon what are the one you use made of?

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The ring is sheet metal - I believe the shop page says it's stainless but the materials list doesn't specify which listed material is for which part.

The thing that makes them hold up to pressure and hold on to the cages so well is that the holes that hold the cages are raised off the neck of the bottle. I'm afraid I don't have much engineering experience so I don't know a better way to explain it - the photos show it, but not in very great detail. I would be willing to say it doubles the resistance to pressure and increases the security of the bottle cage staying in the ring/band by a factor of ten or more.

I've got several interesting 750ml swing top bottles from the Sea Cider Farm on Vancouver Is. that have the wire bail set in a band on a conventional bottle rather than in indentations that were formed into the bottle.



I've never seen this style of swing top anywhere else but it is functionally similar to the metal band that is being discussed. I don't know if it is being pressed on to the bottle with special equipment but I think it successfully demonstrates the concept.

Does anybody know what these bands are called or how they could be sourced? It seems like they would be a great way to retrofit existing bottles to have swing tops.

Renoun said:

I've got several interesting 750ml swing top bottles from the Sea Cider Farm on Vancouver Is. that have the wire bail set in a band on a conventional bottle rather than in indentations that were formed into the bottle.

I've never seen this style of swing top anywhere else but it is functionally similar to the metal band that is being discussed. I don't know if it is being pressed on to the bottle with special equipment but I think it successfully demonstrates the concept.

Does anybody know what these bands are called or how they could be sourced? It seems like they would be a great way to retrofit existing bottles to have swing tops.

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It looks like they're carbonating those with regular caps, though, which makes me wonder if they trust the swingtops to hold pressure. It looks like the swingtop is there to reseal the bottle for finishing later.

FatDragon said:

It looks like they're carbonating those with regular caps, though, which makes me wonder if they trust the swingtops to hold pressure.

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I haven't made an exhaustive examination of all the local bottle shops but I'm not sure that I've ever seen a swingtop bottle in a retail environment that wasn't capped too. I suspect that being sealed, tamper resistant, etc. is probably a more significant factor.

Renoun said:

I haven't made an exhaustive examination of all the local bottle shops but I'm not sure that I've ever seen a swingtop bottle in a retail environment that wasn't capped too. I suspect that being sealed, tamper resistant, etc. is probably a more significant factor.

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Mönchshof swingtops available here in China aren't capped, and I believe both they and Grolsch seal their labels over the swingbar of the swingtop so the paper is broken when the bottle is opened, which isn't foolproof but seems to work well enough. I think those are the only swingtops I've seen on retail, though.

For commercial beers, it seems the only real uses would be the novelty of the swingtop bottle (either as a cool thing to open on a night out with friends, or as a beer to buy for homebrewers who will reuse the bottle for easy capping), or maybe low-carbed, really big beers that could keep for a few days. Most beers (Mönchshof and Grolsch included) don't keep very well in my experience, so the swingtop doesn't have much more utility than a regular crown cap. It makes more sense with meads and ciders and wines, many of which keep longer and have less or no carbonation to lose.

FatDragon said:

It looks like they're carbonating those with regular caps, though, which makes me wonder if they trust the swingtops to hold pressure. It looks like the swingtop is there to reseal the bottle for finishing later.

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Most likely done so some troublemaker can't just walk in the store and pop all the tops and leave.