I’m very new to home brewing, just started my first brew Saturday and I’m trying to get things lined up and ready to go. My first batch is NB’s Irish Red Kit and it’s bubbling away nicely right now. I’ve ordered Palmers Brew book so maybe it will answer most of my questions and I can go back to comfortably lurking on the forum. My question concerns the bottle caps and when or what dictates using the O2 absorbing ones over the normally used cap? Thanks for the help.
The O2 absorbing caps don’t cost much more than the regular ones, so some say why not use them all the time, but in reality there are very few situations where they help at all. If you want to age your beers for a very long time, or if you are bottling filtered beer (no yeast present to scavenge the O2 - or provide carbonation in the bottle) then you might want O2 absorbent caps. But probably not.
Just buy the regular ones.
I’ve done a side by side comparison using both the regular and o2 caps, and the latter do definitely make a difference I was actually able to taste…especially in the longer aged “keeping” beers I so love.
Bottom line (for me, anyway):
At only $1 more per bag, I use the o2 caps for anything I choose to bottle.
It’s kind of a ‘no brainer’.
When I started brewing, a buddy hooked me up with a ton of Diet Cherry Coke caps that he scored from the local bottling company when they stopped bottling pop. It was a huge cardboard box, something like 12 gross - probably thousands of bottle caps.
So I’ve been using those for about 8 years now, with no problems. The only time I use the O2 absorbing caps are for long-agers like barleywine or RIS.
[quote=“The Professor”]
Bottom line (for me, anyway):
At only $1 more per bag, I use the o2 caps for anything I choose to bottle.
It’s kind of a ‘no brainer’.[/quote]
And that is a bag of 144 caps you’re talking about. So +1 on the no brainer from my point of view.
