Bad seal on flip tops?

Hi All,

First post and beginner homebrewer here. I just recently bottled my 2nd batch of homebrew (an IPA). The first batch I made came out pretty flat and I wasn't sure why. I used the recommended amount of priming sugar and followed the instructions closely. I use flip top (grolsch) bottles and caps that I got off amazon and store them in a plastic bin while they are conditioning. One thing I noticed with the first batch is that when I would open the lid to the plastic bin I would smell beer, which to me indicates the caps don't have a good seal and gasses are escaping. I'm now noticing this on my 2nd batch as well. The flip top caps I have are plastic, not ceramic/rubber.

My question is, is this common with plastic flip tops? Should I go out and replace them with ceramic/rubber flip tops? I just bottled on Sunday, so is it too late to switch the caps out on this batch (ie, would the beer go flat if I open them now and change the caps)?

 

I've never had a problem with this. There shouldn't be a problem with the plastic vs the ceramic. Maybe the amazon supplier is is skimping on decent gaskets? Thant would be hard to believe, but you could order some replacements to see if that helps.

https://www.morebeer.com/products/ez-cap-replacement-gaskets-12.html

 

Would changing the caps now ruin the beer since I'd be releasing a lot of the pressure prematurely?

FYI these are the ones I bought: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YB6HPU2/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I noticed in some of the reviews other homebrewers had a similar issue...wish I saw that before ordering them

 

You may loose some pressure but I can't say you'd ruin them. If carbonation is low after a while, you could recarb with cab drops right in the bottle. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003E5ZYB8/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I guess I would leave some alone, replace the gasket on some others, and reprime some and see what the result is. The biggest problem is going to be loosing the aromatics of your hops in leaky bottles/ replacing the gaskets.

 

I went this route when I started, and still prefer the perceived economy of the flip-tops. However, after determining that I was losing about 35% of each batch to leaky gaskets, I bought some special silicone gaskets off Ebay that were recommended here. That got me down to about 25% loss. Then I went to straight bottle caps with a bench capper. No more lost to gas leaks. And now I've truly been bitten by the homebrew bug and I'm moving to kegging (although I am having a learning curve there, too).

I found that if I paid special attention to centering the cap and gasket before flipping the bail down I had better success. Irregularities in the bottle rim or the cap itself can leave tiny gaps. I had more success with the Easy Cap bottles, which were, of course, more expensive than the generic flip-tops I preferred. If I had the patience for it, I would mark each bottle that worked and those that failed, and cull out the failures over time if they repeat. Too lazy though.