A while back I made my first partial mash brew. Half of the batch I bottled in regular 22 oz. Bombers, and the rest I bottled in the 1 Liter EZ Cap flip top bottles. Every one of the flip tops went bad for some reason. The regular bottles were fine. I ran all bottles through the dishwasher in a sanitary/high temp wash (no detergent) as I usually do, and I soaked all the new flip tops in Star San prior to use. Any ideas as to why only the flip tops went bad, and the others did not?
the seals on the flip tops must be bad. that’s all I could figure . did the flip tops carb up as well as the bombers? if there was no carb in the flip tops, that’s your problem.
I’ve been using flip tops for several batches and have had no problems so far but sooner or later I expect them to go bad.
Hmm….well I guess I’m not sure how you would know until you open them. But when I did open the flip tops, they were a gushing, long lasting volcano of suds and sour beer. They were brand new bottles with new seals/caps so I wouldn’t think the seals could be bad. It’s a mystery. I am bottling a new batch today with them so we’ll see how it goes.
well now all I can think is that since they were new there must of been something in them that the dishwasher did not remove ,or the starsan for that mater. when I get a lot of crud in my fermenters or bottles I will soak them in bleach water after all attempts at cleaning fail. this seams to get out the hard to remove stuff. it dose take a couple of days though . maybe bleach will straiten out your bottles just a guess at best. good luck.
The flip tops probably had all sorts of oil and dirt accumulating in them from the time they were manufactured to the time the bails and caps were installed.
A dishwasher isn’t very effective in cleaning bottles with narrow mouths and large bodies. Use a bottle brush and electric drill with a PBW solution to clean the bottles.
Some people will say they have always used the dishwasher and haven’t had an infection, yet. There is some anecdotal data that indicates infections can occur using the dishwasher to clean beer bottles.
