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Belgian corks for 750ml bottles
I have a case of belgian style bottles that I plan on putting my Belgian wit in. I need to get some corks, but every place on the internet says that I need to purchase a floor capper to set these. I find this a little strange, as I have filled some of these bottles before, and just pressed them in by hand, and twisted the wire hood on. Does anyone else put these on by hand, or is there some reason why it should not be done.
P.S. The beer in the hand pressed bottle conditioned fine.
Maybe it's just me, but I'd think if you can push it in by hand that it's not really airtight. You would have no real way of compressing the cork without using a real corker. I can see corks flying out, especially when dealing with Belgians, which often call for high carbonation.
But if you've done it by hand before and were happy with the results, then by all means, hamfist those corks into those bottles!
DT
Yea, I only have 12, and I don't really know how often I will be using the bottles. (only for Belgians probabaly). I gripped the sides of the cork with my fingers, and kinda twisted it in after dipping in in santized water, then put the wire hood on. Seemed to work great, but I have a feeling, i'tll take me an hour to do 12. ha ha
Well a corker can also be used when making wine, mead, and any number of other libations. Plus it's a lot of fun to make crazy beers and cork them for drinking much later - cork them, then the wire hood, then some wax...that sucker will age for decades!
DT
well, forcing them in by hand didn't work. I was recorking belgians using the original corks, and I could put those in, but when I bought new ones, I couldn't get them even started. I didn't cave in and buy a corker though, I got one of those italian hand corkers for about 5 bucks, it's like a tube that gradually gets smaller, and another piece that pushes from the top, and forces it in. It took some time, but I only had 12 bottles to cork, and I wasn't going to blow 70 bucks on a floor corker. it took a while to get used to it, and since you only want a belgian cork in half way, you kinda had to stop and look to see how far the cork was in the bottle, but it worked fine. Took me a half an hour to bottle 6 bottles, and i'm saving the other 6 bottles for my other batch.
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