Bottle Tampering

As they have stopped doing this....

(See this year vs previous lindley park releases)

 

Doing something like this is labor intensive and may increase the retial cost of the product.

 

I know that this clown getting caught sending re-filled bottles has brought this issue to a bigger stage, but if you think that this is a one and done thing that rarely happens I would say that you are very wrong. There are scammers in every single market, ESPECIALLY regarding items traded and sold online (jewelry, clothes, shoes, designer bags, designer glasses frames, watches, etc.) With the popularity of craft beer booming and the absolutely absurd prices you see these limited beers fetch on the secondary market, I think that you would have to be terribly naive to think that this doesn't happen a lot. This tampering scam might not be as prevalent with craft beer as it is with retail goods, but look at the world we live in today. It's a hard world these days and there are so much scum out there looking for that extra dollar who would probably run over their own mother for a pair of the new Lebron 12's.

I guess all I'm trying to say is that this method of screwing people over doesn't surprise me one bit, and it definitely makes me think twice before trading when it comes to bigger beers.

 

All the stamps and things on the wax are nice but what about bottles without wax? Cantillon, BCBS variants, CCB stuff, the list goes on

 

How easy is it to recork something like a capped and corked cantillon/fantome as well as corked and caged?

 

If that guy didn't fake the wax, who knows if he would ever would have been caught. There could be someone out there that had learned from this and only fakes the easy ones. Avoids the wax and gets away with it.

One way I can think of is the cap on tomato sauce that pops up after being opened. Not even sure if this could be applied to a beer, but someway of having it pop open after the beer is opened would work. Maybe? lol

 

Pretty simple* solution - some variation of the old paper neck label Michelob bottles once used. The label covered the side of the crown, and was perforated, so a ring of paper was removed along the cap. (Before and after shots below).





The modern Samichlaus bottle also uses a similar paper neck label that covers the crown.

Alternately, the similar glued-on foil neck labels used by many Euro brands (inc. the original Swiss Samichlaus from Hurlimann) - but the modern beer geeks seem to get freaked out by the surface rust the foil often creates on the crown by trapping moisture.

* (well, to me - since I'm not the one who'll have to rework the neck labeling mechanism )

 

this is not hard to defeat.

there are plenty of corkers out there for homebrewers (e.g., colonna: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/colonna-capper-corker.html).

if you cork/cage your beers, this is a great tool. and yes, it can cover cantillon/fantome bottles too.