I bottled ~10gal or so of a mead/saison hybrid using the Methode Champenoise a few months ago. I opened a bottle the other night and it was petilant. All of others have held their carbonation pretty well, so I was suprised. I’m not really sure what happened, but I suspect the plastic stoppers may not be as reliable as bottle caps to hold in the pressure.
Champagne bottles will take a crown cap.
Theoretically, yes. Put 5 volumes in them and store them at 80*F and things can get exciting.
Plus they don’t look nearly as cool. Would regular cork ones work or is there a special “mushroom” shaped one? I ask cause I’ve got some high-test, soured/brett saison that I want to put in champagne bottles some day.
Special corks and corker. You need a champagne corker that compresses the corks before inserting them.
If you get the American champagne-style bottles, they’ll take a “standard” North American crown. I just had issues with about a dozen crowns leaking under high pressure, and a few crowns flying off unexpectedly. They were carbed to between 5-5.3 volumes at that point, and at a warm room-temp. If you can keep them colder (60*s) or pressurize them lower (I dunno, <4.5 vol?) you probably won’t have the same problem. I used a double-lever and a bench capper on those bottles, and I think the double-lever capper actually gave a better seal than my bench capper.
I’ve been crown capping champagne bottles for 23 years without any problems, ever.
Cool, thanks for the advice.
When I first started brewing I bottled in champagne bottles because I had access to a lot of them, but not so many cappable beer bottles.
Later on, and now I use them for special presentation. Pouring from a champagne bottle is a bit more impressive than pouring from a 12oz longneck. Especially if you cover the top with a shrinkwrap wine bottle neck seal. It’s not cork and cage fancy, but much easier if you don’t have the proper equipment to cork and cage with.
Many brew shops rent out cork presses for a few bucks a day. Has anyone used glycerin cork lube before? I’m curious if this is actually necessary.