I capped my dark hybrid lager with the last of my o2 barrier caps,minus a couple on 3/17. Had to use an old,yet still sealed bag of Brewer's Best caps I had left from the wife's 1st brew more than a year ago for light hybrid lager on 4/2.
Yesterday,5/27 I openned a bottle of the dark with the o2 caps. The lager-like crispness was a bit more pronounced with the spiciness of the haulertauer mittelfruh. Clear beer,amber/brown color with fine bubbled carbonation.
So I got steak & beans ready for supper,grabbed a light hybrid out of the fridge with the BB caps. I pour it into a Coke glass,nice & clear,but larger bubbles. Needed more fridge time for finer carbonation. Good head,finally nice & clear. Byyuuurp,wtf?? First time I got a really big,bad mouthfull of musty wet cardboard. Never that bad or lasting this long in bottles. Especially after allowing clean up time,& just that one bottle out of the last case so far. Had to dump it. First time for that,ever. First case had one gusher too,but took a couple seconds to blow after opening. Both were BB caps.
So it's clear to me that o2 barrier caps are def better in the long run time-wise. The dark with the o2 caps is outlasting the regular ones. Def more consistent bottle to bottle. And all the bottles were rinsed,scrubbed,& rinsed again inside before going onto the bottle tree to dry before storage. And I used dextrose with a priming calculator to style too. Used my new super agata bench capper as well.
Proving to me once again that spending the extra buck or so for better caps is assuredly a worthwhile investment in the beer I spent so much time on getting good.
Yesterday,5/27 I openned a bottle of the dark with the o2 caps. The lager-like crispness was a bit more pronounced with the spiciness of the haulertauer mittelfruh. Clear beer,amber/brown color with fine bubbled carbonation.
So I got steak & beans ready for supper,grabbed a light hybrid out of the fridge with the BB caps. I pour it into a Coke glass,nice & clear,but larger bubbles. Needed more fridge time for finer carbonation. Good head,finally nice & clear. Byyuuurp,wtf?? First time I got a really big,bad mouthfull of musty wet cardboard. Never that bad or lasting this long in bottles. Especially after allowing clean up time,& just that one bottle out of the last case so far. Had to dump it. First time for that,ever. First case had one gusher too,but took a couple seconds to blow after opening. Both were BB caps.
So it's clear to me that o2 barrier caps are def better in the long run time-wise. The dark with the o2 caps is outlasting the regular ones. Def more consistent bottle to bottle. And all the bottles were rinsed,scrubbed,& rinsed again inside before going onto the bottle tree to dry before storage. And I used dextrose with a priming calculator to style too. Used my new super agata bench capper as well.
Proving to me once again that spending the extra buck or so for better caps is assuredly a worthwhile investment in the beer I spent so much time on getting good.
. You just sold me on the O2 caps. I was kinda freaked out this past weekend when I shared a few saisons with a buddy. Now this was a highly carbed batch, 3.25 vol CO2. Every one I had opened up until the weekend was highly, but appropriately, carbed. Then my buddy opened his. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. I had even gently stirred the primed beer before bottling. This was a first. All these batches and never had this happen. I'm chalking it up to a single bad cap job. But the point being that perhaps an O2 barrier cap would have worked better - I don't know. Like you, I'm willing to spend a buck or two more in the short term for better results in the long run.
