Capping issues

I bottled my second batch and encountered a strange problem. My caps had a really hard time staying on the bottles. This did not happen once with my first batch.luckily I had cleaned enough Grolsch swingtops to save the day. I guess my question is what could the problem be? Here are some troubleshooting scenarios I ran through:

1) the bottles
My bottles are standard brown and do not differ from those used in my first batch.

2) the caps
I used caps from a different shop, but they seem to be identical silver caps. Are there different types?

3) I soaked caps in starsan instead of sodium meta.

4) my capper could be broken.
I have a hand capper and it seems to slip sideways a touch.

thoughts welcome

Are they by chance, "twist off" bottles. I've capped those by mistake and they didn't work out too well. Other than that, I can't see what it could be, other than a broken capper.

They are twist off, but so were the entire previous batch and none did this. I also tried it with some pop tops bottles and only successfully capped one. Also, I have known many people to bottle homebrew, all on screw offs.

You should really get away from using the screw cap bottles. I would call that the problem. I know you used them last time, and some brewers use them with no problems, but unless you have a bench capper, then I wouldn't risk it. You may have damaged the crown on your capper, or some other part, capping the previous batch. Hard to say though. I would try those caps on some pop top bottles and see how it goes.

If the caps and the bottles are the same I would start looking at the capper to see if there is something wrong with it.

jtmwhyte said:

They are twist off, but so were the entire previous batch and none did this. I also tried it with some pop tops bottles and only successfully capped one. Also, I have known many people to bottle homebrew, all on screw offs.

Click to expand...

See the above post... I did try with pop tops... Thanks for helping me troubleshoot people!

There are standard bottle caps, then there are specialty bottle caps that only fit certain types of specialty bottles, like true Belgian beer bottles. I bet you accidentally picked up some non-standard bottle caps. The difference is only like 1/8", but that's all it takes!

Here's an opinion from a lazy man who has never and will never cap a bottle: drink more Grolsch, or order some flippies, and never worry about what kind of bottle-caps you need.

Found the problem. The caps were not the same. They were a goldish-silver and were ever so slightly bigger than the silver. You can't even tell until you put one inside of the other. Thanks for all the replies!

jtmwhyte said:

I bottled my second batch and encountered a strange problem. My caps had a really hard time staying on the bottles. This did not happen once with my first batch.luckily I had cleaned enough Grolsch swingtops to save the day. I guess my question is what could the problem be? Here are some troubleshooting scenarios I ran through:

1) the bottles
My bottles are standard brown and do not differ from those used in my first batch.

2) the caps
I used caps from a different shop, but they seem to be identical silver caps. Are there different types?

3) I soaked caps in starsan instead of sodium meta.

4) my capper could be broken.
I have a hand capper and it seems to slip sideways a touch.

thoughts welcome

Click to expand...

jtmwhyte said:

Found the problem. The caps were not the same. They were a goldish-silver and were ever so slightly bigger than the silver. You can't even tell until you put one inside of the other. Thanks for all the replies!

Click to expand...

well no sh*t!! i just had the same issue.. looks like im heading to my LHBS and talk to them about it

You cannot/should not cap screw off bottles. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Sam Adams has the best bottles. I almost think they WANT you to use their bottles. Their labels come off easily and every beer they brew is in a capped bottle. Plus they make some pretty good beers. I'm loving this new wheat they have. I forget the name but i'm drunk so whatever. Anyway, Just drink sam adams for a few months and save all the bottles. You'll have more bottles that you know what to do with eventually.

Once I have lots of flip-top bottles so once I starte kegging I realized I didn't need any capped bottles. You'll probably get there too eventually, but my advice is if you are going to drink a commercial beer jut drink same adams and save them. They are the best bottles for capping.