When Good Cappers Go Bad

Northern Brewer General
1

Absolute brute of a bottling session on Sunday - Don’t even know where to start.

I have the bench capper from this site and all of a sudden when I press down to cap, the capper part shoots to the side - meaning that I couldn’t get the caps on straight and it wouldn’t even seal them - so then I started using my old style capper to try and get the seal - this resulted in 8 bottles smashing right in front of me. Wife wasn’t impressed with the mess I was causing with broken glass and stout everywhere.

Ended up getting 40 bottles of brew sufficiently tightened so I decided to store them for a few days upside down in the fast rack so I could be sure they weren’t still leaking.
Checked them this morning and 5 more had leaked.

So looks like I’m getting 35 bottles out of my 5 gallon batch.

Sucks especially because this was a RIS that I’d brewed in October and had sat in secondary for 5 months.
Oh - and to make matters worse - I only realized yesterday that I had forgot to add more yeast so I’ll be crossing my fingers for about a year to see if I get any carbonation at all.

Hope this at least cheers someone up about a bad time they had - it certainly makes me feel better to vent here rather than go hire a shrink!

Now - off to buy a new capper - any recommendations…

2

Are you perhaps over-pressing on the capper?

The capper bell has a fair amount of mechanical advantage. You don’t need to arm wrestle the capers; you only need to apply about 10 year-old girl levels of strength. Much more force and you’re just stressing the capper’s parts, and snapping bottle necks…

3

Are you using Fermentor’s Favorite bottle caps?

4

Super Agata bench capper.

5

yeah - fermenters favorites. Had a pack of 128. There were 13 left at the end with all the mess ups.
I just ordered the Super Agata. Guess I cant complain that the old one served me for about 40 batches.

6

Those caps are garbage! If you have any left, I’d throw them away. Don’t know the what, or how of them, but I had the same problem with them not sealing. Luckily I’m close to a shop that sells the cheapy bulk gold caps…and they’ve not let me down.

+1 to the Super Agata Bench model.

:cheers:

7

[quote=“Flibster”]yeah - fermenters favorites. Had a pack of 128. There were 13 left at the end with all the mess ups.
I just ordered the Super Agata. Guess I cant complain that the old one served me for about 40 batches.[/quote]

I had the exact same problem. I even went out and bought a new capper, thinking that mine went kaput. New capper, same problem. Then I bought a different brand of caps (L.D. Carlson.) Problem solved. I contacted Northern Brewer and they promptly issued me a refund for the bad caps.

8

I had the same problem with Fermentors Favorites caps. Only tested six of them. Wish NB would offer a refund. They ignored my review of the caps.

9

I’ve used several different colors of fermentor’s favorites without a problem. Must be lack of quality control between batches of caps.

10

I have a brand new bag of fermenters favorite caps in my brew shelf… I have been following this issue for a while now and will be pitching them shortly…I do have three bags of L.D. Carlson 02 absorbing caps…better idea…Tank :cheers:

11

I wrote to Customer Service. I had a refund within a day.

12

I received a refund today. NB admitted a poor quality control shipment from an unnamed manufacturer.

13

[quote=“Flibster”]yeah - fermenters favorites. Had a pack of 128. There were 13 left at the end with all the mess ups.
I just ordered the Super Agata. Guess I cant complain that the old one served me for about 40 batches.[/quote]

Northern Brewer will send refunds to anyone who contacts them about problems with the Fermentors Favorites caps. Their customer service is pretty good. They might reimburse for broken equipment.