Getting ready to brew my first barleywine. It’s supposed to stay in the bottle minimum nine months. I generally just buy the cheap caps for bottling … are there better caps I should get for long-term storage of a beer?
Thanks for the help.
I would just make sure they are Oxygen barrier caps.
There are the O2 abxorbing caps, but I have not seen those at the LHBS in a while. I use the oxygen barrier caps for big beers. Try and cap on foam if you can. Some even wax the cap in an attempt to add more O2 barrier, but I have not done that.
For smaller beers that are to be consumed quickly, I use the cheap caps.
Thanks for the info.
I’m still a bit of a rookie, so what do you mean by “cap on foam”?
You can try and get some foam in the beer as it is being bottled, hard to do with beer from the fermenter as there is only about 0.8-1.0 volumes of CO2. My cheap bottling wands will give me some foam. Foam is made of bubbles of CO2. So if you have foam, it has displaced air, and the O2 in the air. This should help cut down on the oxidation of the beer.
Got it. Thanks!
I personally am not a fan of the Oxygen barrier caps. They activate as soon as they are wet. This means that you either do not use a liquid sanitizer or you will lose most of their absorbing power. I personally for Barleywines like a little oxidation in the beer. It helps to mellow the beer out and adds a lot to the flavor.
Also you can tap on the side of the bottle neck with a knife or a spoon and it may create a little foam.
Bottle-conditioned beers will consume the oxygen when carbonating. They tend to stay fresher than kegged beers transferred to bottles because of the presence of more yeast.
For the long haul, you can always dip the crowns/neck of the bottle in wax. I’m talking decades though.
It doesn’t happen that fast, you have hours to days before the O2 absorbing capacity of the caps is gone. 
Right. I use a lot of o2 absorbing caps and have yet to have a problem caused by getting them wet.
Since my stronger beers go into bottle after a long period of bulk aging, I generally put some water in a small pan and when it comes to a boil, toss in the quanitity of caps I need for the session, and start bottling right away.
But many brewers don’t sanitize the caps at all before applying them, and they report no problems.
+1 to both of these. Go ahead and use the O2 scavenging caps. They cost very little extra and it’s worth using them to reduce the O2 as much as possible, expecially for big beers that will be aged for a while. I’ve also known a number of brewers that don’t sanitize their caps at all with no problems, but I’ve always thought it was worth the extra effort to sanitize. I use StarSan to soak the caps rather than boiling them. That’s always worked well for me.
The one caveat being that if you sanitize a few extra (I always do) and don’t use some of them, you should toss them or put them in with the non-O2 scavenging caps. 
Is there any way to know what are O2 scavenging caps and what are not?
The ones I’ve gotten are labeled that way on the package, and it’s printed around the rim of the cap too.
Thanks for all the good info. Hopefully I can put it to good use: My OG was much lower than anticipated, so I’m wondering if my FG will be low enough in the end … Not sure it will end up sporting the high ABV of a barleywine after all. I might experiment a bit and use regular caps for half and oxygen barrier caps for the other.
For the price you can’t go wrong with oxygen absorbing caps. $2.60 for 60 caps.
Plus your beer will benefit from them.
One recommendation I’ve heard is instead of crimping the cap immediately after filling, just set it loose on the bottle for a half hour or so before crimping it down. Supposedly the priming sugar will start to generate enough CO2 in that time to purge O2 out of the headspace. Don’t know if I buy this. but it can’t hurt.