Today while bottling my fourth batch my red capper broke off a little plastic “wing” on the side. This wing looks to be a guide of some sort but does not touch the cap and the capper appears to still function.
I really had no option but to continue bottling. While the capped bottles look fine and don’t leak when turned upside down, I did adjust my capping procedure for the remaining bottles by seating the cap as usual then rotating the bottle 90 degrees and seating it again.
While the no leak test is encouraging I hope the caps can tolerate the pressure during carbonation.
Any suggestions on what I should have done? Besides get a new capper? Have a backup capper?
If I have some caps blow off in the next few days, could I go ahead and recap with a new capper or just reseat the existing caps?
As a side note, those red cappers are near indestructible. There was a thread a while back talking about a batch of defective cappers that had some issue with the linkages. Maybe you have/had one.
See if you can search or check with customer service wherever you got it.
Just took a look at mine. If I guess correctly, the little ‘wing’ thing looks like a guide and there’s one on the other side. Looks like it would not affect the crimping action at all. So I think your caps are fine.
By the way, the crimp, rotate 90 degrees and recrimp is my SOP. Does it make a difference? I don’t know, but it does give me a little peace of mind.
[quote=“James Rausch”]J
By the way, the crimp, rotate 90 degrees and recrimp is my SOP. Does it make a difference? I don’t know, but it does give me a little peace of mind.[/quote]
That’s what I do ever since I had a couple bottles that didn’t seal quite right on the first try. I cap, rotate, give it another go and try twisting the cap when I’m done. :cheers:
NB update:
I sent an email and photos to NB customer service yesterday (Sunday) just to find out if my capper was a dud. Within 2 hours I had a response.
NB is replacing the capper and and offered to replace my beer recipe if things went south due to capping issues. By the end of the day, I had a UPS notification that capper had been shipped.
