So I’m going to bottle most if not all of the 10 gallons I have in Martinelli’s bottles. For those unfamiliar, they are wine sized bottles with a beer bottle top.
I’m just wondering if anyone has done this before and if there is any reason this might be a bad idea.
As long as they’re not screw top it should be fine. It’s been many a’ year since I’ve had Martinelli’s, but I think I remember needing a bottle opener…
For some reason my hand capper won’t fit those “American Champagne” style bottles. I’ve tried to finesse it every which way, but can’t get to clamp down all the way. I bet a bench capper would probably work just fine. I just haven’t been able to justify the extra expense to upgrade for the ONE bottle I want to cap. haha
“… if there is any reason this might be a bad idea.”
How tall is your shelf space ? 
Yeah they definitely use a regular bottle cap, which is why I thought of it. And around the holidays non-drinkers ALWAYS buy martinellis. The labels I’ve found come off very easily as well.
Yeah, I noticed that about the sparkling wine bottles just this last week. Had a couple over new year’s.
a friend of mine did some beer in a couple once I found out and he said they worked great. I’m considering doing a test with a couple of 2 liters of soda to see if they seal well.
Great idea with putting some soda in them to test. I only brought my hand capper issue up so you wouldn’t put cider in them and find out the capper wouldn’t work. You could always just put water in them…cap it and turn it upside down to see if it leaks.
Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ll have to run that test.
Well what do you know, my wife brought home a bottle of Martinelli’s from the grocery store today. I’ll try to remember to grab the bottle and give it a try after she drinks it.
So went into the local homebrew supply place today and they said with martinelli’s bottles and american champagne bottles you need a 29mm cap. Just slightly larger than your normal bottlecap:
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/brew ... -size.htmlJust tried capping some with regular caps just now though to test for a couple of days. Didn’t have any trouble getting the cap on, however I’ll probably cap with the 29mm when it comes time to go.
Wondering if people use these for wine at all.
So I capped three of these with regular sized caps about 4 days ago and had them upside down the whole time. No leakage at all. Seemed to seal fine with a regular sized cap.
Excellent. Thanks for the update.
So I bottled them all today.
Went to a different homebrew shop than the one before and asked about getting 29mm caps. The owner there said that they weren’t necessary for Martinelli’s or american champagne bottles if you can get a seal on them. He said that he bottled with them all the time and to boil the caps for a few seconds before putting them on instead of using the star san, because heating them up a little will give you a better seal.
The four bottles I experimented with never leaked after 5 days, so I felt pretty good about it. Here’s what I ended up with:
http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos- ... 1935_n.jpg http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos- ... 1515_n.jpgI’ve used Martinelli bottles off and on for years with no problem.
Yeah, I think the 29mm caps are really more for Belgian bottles. I had one belgian ale bottle that I thought would work fine but it was much wider than the martinelli’s and champagne bottles I had. Martinelli’s and champagne heads are slightly larger than a regular beer bottle, but by very little. I’ll post some up close pictures later comparing the two.
