Bottling in Champagne Bottles

It depends on your caps, bottles and capper . . .

I have lots of champagne bottles that work fine for beer either with the reused corks, or plastic caps, or bottle caps. If you reuse the corks, you might want to reuse the wire keepers also (worked for me).

I have to use the bench capper on champagne bottles because the lever capper won't work with the wide necks.

I am using the ordinary bottle caps - but seem to remember someplace selling ones made specifically for champagne bottles (and I don't understand how that works - presumably the "special" ones are wider - yet they work with ordinary cappers? maybe just a marketing gimmick)

Screw on caps/bottles from "sparkling grape juice" can be reused for beer also.

...

At least one brand of wing capper allows you to swing out a piece so that the wider necks will work - mine does. Most don't, I understand.

All champagne bottles I've seen have the normal sized crown cap and work with my capper. However, people do say that there are some champagne bottles that have a larger opening and need the larger caps - and I don't know if THOSE caps work with an ordinary capper?

Derric

Sounds like a good idea. I hate having to drag out the bench capper. What brand is it?

Mine is a "Brev" - made in Italy. It is metal. There is apparently one on E-bay right now, item number: 6167594597 but I can't be certain from the picture whether the neck part swings out or not. You should contact the seller and be sure before bidding. For reference, here is a picture of one that is shown open:

Boy do I feel stupid . . . and laughing so hard I'm crying. I looked at the picture and realized it looks like mine - sure enough it is!

I've been using that silly thing since 1990 and didn't realize the neck gripper was adjustable for different size necks.

Well thanks for the info (sheepishly)

That *IS* funny! :)

It really doesn't look like it should move, so it's not surprising that you never noticed. I don't remember why/how I noticed...

Derric