Leaking Cantillon

I've had a lot of corked bottles leak (mostly Lost Abbey) and as long as a significant amount hadn't gone missing just didn't stress about it.

That said, those were all bottles I received. If it was a bottle I sent and recipient brought it up, I would send out a box with a handful of locals or limited-shelf releases that I had multiples of.

 

Well an ounce of leakage could be "significantly lower", the neck is pretty skinny so a little liquid loses a lot of volume. If we're talking an ounce or two then I wouldn't send a replacement.

Incidentally, let this be a lesson to not trade Cantillon when it's hot.

(Also, why are these so prone to leaking? It seems like they should leak less than any random capped beer, but they definitely leak more. What's the deal?)

 

OP, ask the dude to send you a photo or post it here. We'll get to the bottom of this. As stupac2 says, the neck is so narrow an oz or two lost can look like a lot is missing when it isn't.

 

True, electrical tape generally does little if anything other than to add a slight additional seal. Only pointing out that the only major leakage I've had on these bottles is when they were completely untaped. Probably incidental though. Nonetheless, I consider well packed and well taped bottles part of good shipping habits. I may be paranoid, but this is what I use anymore when I really want to try and prevent a leak, though I get a discount brand: http://www.cableorganizer.com/vypar/xtreme-tape/

This stuff is silicon and does create a watertight seal when done properly as far as I can tell, and it is cheaper than resending a box. Cheers!

 

I sort of oversimplified before when I said "watertight seal". That's only sort of relevant.

To see why, think about what would happen if you had a tape that did make a completely watertight seal (maybe that one you linked does, I don't know, but after trying to seal surfaces at work I'm inherently skeptical about the ability of tape to maintain a real seal, although I'm usually working with gasses). There's still a little bit of air between the tap and the parts of the bottle it can't make contact with, like between the crimp and the neck. There will always be some air in there, and that air is at atmospheric pressure.

So now you heat up the bottle (or whatever you've done to increase the internal pressure). The pressure builds above the failure point of the cap. So some gas/liquid wants to go out through whatever part of the cap has failed. It just right into the air gap left by the tape! There is nothing stopping that, even if you made a perfect, watertight seal.

Now, it's true that at some point, if your tape has made a perfect seal, that the pressure will equalize and the bottle will stop leaking. So it might limit leakage, but it won't prevent it.

This reminds me of when someone posted about using a vacuum-packer to seal in his beer, it's completely air-tight! Nothing can get through! ...Except that that probably makes leaking more likely, because now you've lowered the pressure on the outside. All that happens if the beer leaks is that the package expands. I suppose in that case you can still drink the stuff that leaked, if you want, but unless the outside of the bottle/inside of the bag had been sanitized... yuck. (Although I suppose it does make it impossible for liquid to be detected by shipping companies, but I'm not sure if the increased efficiency of that over a trash bag is worth the extra cost/effort.)

TL;DR: Tape won't stop a leak, but it might limit the leak if it's really good tape (and it probably won't even do that).

 

I know this is a debate that will rage on forever on BA, but... I've never had electrical tape prevent leakage and I personally hate it on the bottles I receive. It leaves residue, makes the bottles smell, and makes them unusable for me when I homebrew . That being said I've never complained about a sender putting it on a bottle. As long as we put the onus on the sender to deliver undamaged bottles, whatever makes them comfortable is fine with me.

 

I haven't seen any leakage, but I've taken to storing all my lambic on their side and was recently surprised to open a Cantillon and find liquid in between the cork and the cap.

 

Ditto, though silicon/static tape doesn't leave any residue. Makes me happy, so if I want it done, I just ask the trader to put it on. Probably just in my head, but given it can limit leaking, I ask my traders to do it. Gonna bow out of this one now, cheers!

 

Good call. I do have a roll of stretch'n'seal that I keep around for holding down fliptops/cages and that I'll use if traders request it. Stretch'n'seal is expensive as hell, but doesn't leave residue.

 

Same here. Popped a Cantillon Kriek two weeks ago and while the fill level wasn't noticeably down, the top of the cork was wet under the cap (as I've seen several times with Cantillon). Kind of an "uh oh" moment when I smelled the cork...straight balsamic...but the beer was just fine.

I muled all my latest stash back in June, but I'm sure the heat experienced in a summer trade would force more liquid past the cork.

 

If tape doesn't create its own seal, could it reinforce the existing cap seal?

 

Depends on what you mean. I think that if the tape doesn't create a watertight seal then it's doing absolutely nothing but making the beer harder to open and (potentially) leaving behind sticky residue. If it does create a watertight seal then, as I said, it's only limiting the leakage that can occur.

If you're asking if the tape can make a cap withstand higher internal pressures than it otherwise would, I believe the answer is "no", simply because I don't see any method by which it could.

 

Tape blah blah blah..... Electrical tape might help keeping a bottle-cap from completely blowing off (and hence causing a wet box to become inspected) but that's it.

As far as Cantillon is concerned, I've had Fou Founes leak in shipping, Lou Pepe's, and Classics.....

They leak...... just the way it is.

 

It's just how the cork is. The residue in between cap and cork will smell terrible. The liquid in the bottle will be fine.

 

I've shipped over a 100 bottles of Cantillon, and the tape thing has never helped. However, the most I've ever had leak out was maybe a couple of teaspoons worth. I've actually got one in the fridge right now that has some sticky red residue on the side of the neck of the bottle (Lou Pepe Kriek) that I found about a week ago while organizing my cellar. That one, and I can't be sure, but I'd swear it leaked out while in my cellar, and I store my Cantillon standing up!

PS: Statistcally, my "leak rate" is about 5% maybe, and I try to always ship in cool weather (most of the speaking I do is bottles coming to me from about 1000 miles away).

Ted

 

Oooo do you have records? Reasonable sample sizes and quantifiable results are so rare in the world of beer, having a good data set actually excites me. (Although the error bars on 100 samples would still be big, it would be better than memory!)

 

(above, speaking = shipping, not sure what happened there)

No records, but everytime one leaks I put it in a fridge to drink right away. I've had this happen about 5 times now, and I know I've gotten in over a 100 bottles in the last 2 to 2.5 years. No real pattern to it either, I've had Lamvinus, Lou Pepe Kriek as well as Gueuze, Mamouche and CdC leak. You can always tell when one leaks as soon as you open the box due to the smell.

Edit: For completeness sake, I recently shipped out about 15 bottles of Fou'Foune and didn't hear back of any of them leaking. They were spread across 6 seperate trades. Mind you, there could have been a leak and maybe nobody told me...

 

Of Cantillon?

Mother of god... what do you want from Western, NY?

 

Yep! My girlfriend may actually love it even more than I do, so I need to keep a large supply on hand. Plus, it ages well and I'm a bit of a hoarder, always worried that they'll stop sending it to us up here in Canada. It's probably the only thing that I can get here that trades *really* well with you guys in the U.S. The only problem is shipping, it costs me about $30-$40 to ship 3 bottles into the U.S. It makes me feel bad because I always have to give the "no extras" speech for ever trade I do, as spending ~$12/bomber shipping on extras isn't worth it (our locals are not worth $12 to ship! )

As for trading, I'm not particularly looking for anything, but I recently did some trades for the 'usual suspects' like BCBS (regular and variants), Dark Lord, Darkness, BB4D, BAPT5, KBS, plus other brewery-only releases of interest, etc. Basically, stuff that everyone talks about on here that sounds good. I always just trade $4$ too, so I figure it works out pretty fair.

Ted