Waxed bottles--is there a point beyond visual appeal?

Always assumed it was to help prevent oxidation. So if that's not the case... how do you prevent oxidation? Besides canning, I mean. I saw a video on youtube where a guy suggested that electrical tape over the cap works? Anyone have any experience with that?

 

Helps during shipping for me when sending bottles unofficially because due to how they have to be sent you aren't 100% sure how much tossing and turning you're going to be putting them through that would cause the bottle to leak.

 

I thought wax was a permanent seal.

 

Drink the beer.

 

Face it, we can rationalize all we want about it having a real beer purpose,but @cavedave, @JackHorzempa and others have already nailed it (and we all know this even if we don't want to admit it).

It is there to play on our desire for something rare, premium, or special, and to separate us from our money.

 

It is a complicated topic but even 'hard' substances permit oxygen to ingress.

If you have a desire to learn more I would encourage you to read:

http://www.better-bottle.com/technical.html

Cheers!

 

In trying to figure out the history of using wax in alcohol bottles I stumbled across an interesting explanation of the origins of the practice. In a time before any reliable oversight of beverage contents or trademark protection a wax covered cap that bore a producers known seal was one way that customers might have a bit more confidence that the contents of the bottle were the thing they intended to purchase. Incidentally, this need to instill confidence would have been much much more important for products that were asking a premium price which might just explain why the connection between wax tops and quality exists today.
Interesting theory if nothing else

 

I feel the wax exists so I can show off my superior bottle skills in front of my lesser enlightened brethren

 

Wax on Wax off

 

Makers Mark has the best solution with the pull tab thingy.

 

Same reason why any business decides to skip a feature th at would benefit the customer: probably costs more $$$

 

I remember reading a post on this forum years ago about how people were selling expensive counterfeit Euro bottle of some type or another - maybe Cantillon? Anyway I guess this guy was trading/selling fake beer for quite a while I'm not sure if he was reusing real bottles or printing his own labels or what the details are foggy but I'm sure someone here will remember what I'm talking about. To the the point of the story I guess this guy tried to counterfeit some other kind of beer and ended up getting his whole scam blown up because he was unable to replicate the exact look of a certain waxed bottle and people realized he had been scamming all along. That is the broad strokes of what happened anyway.

Anyone who knows remembers more about this wanna share some info? So anyway, maybe waxed bottles to have anti-counterfeit measures as a use-case but I don't know how much of a problem counterfeit beer is in 2020. I've certainly never come across it.

 

Waxed Cantillon? Doubtful. This happened -
https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/banned-from-tg.236168/

 

I never said anything about waxed Cantillion, I said a guy who was selling fake bottles of beers like Cantillion (or other expensive Euro bottles) was finally caught after he was unable to correctly wax some other bottle. He faked lots of different beers but again I don't remember all the details as I said in my original post. I'll check out that link now.

 

Waxed bottles look really cool until you stab yourself opening a Dark Lord

 

My bad. My mind jumped ahead of itself recalling that TG incident.

 

I wanted to respond to that with the "Can't we all just agree - Vote for Pedro!" meme but didn't want to take up any additional space. I'm honestly not surprised that there are multiple people in the beer faking business though. I got a laugh out of that thread from the guy who bought the bottles at TG and then put on a disguise to get back in line for a second allotment. It sounds cartoonish. Obviously the part about selling fake beer is less funny. Glad he was caught.