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Crowns twisting on the bottle?

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  • Crowns twisting on the bottle?

    One of our bottlers noticed that he could twist the crowns on our freshly-filled bottles (pry-offs). I tried adjusting the crowner on our GAI 3003A with no effect. The crowns are right where they're supposed to be tightness-wise according to my go/no go gauge.

    I also tested the crown integrity by shaking the hell out of a couple of full bottles and immersing them in a bucket of very hot water. No bubbles. I'm surprised the bottles, at near 32F, didn't shatter when they hit the 180F water, but it seems there is no leakage from the crowns.

    I'm thinking this is normal and we just never noticed it before. Any ideas, folks?
    Timm Turrentine

    Brewerywright,
    Terminal Gravity Brewing,
    Enterprise. Oregon.

  • #2
    Freezing?

    I've frozen cans and bottles to be sure that the crowns/ends don't come undone. The glass should break before the crown leaks. The can should bulge the bottom before the end leaks. Not very quantitative, but it's fast and useful to some extent.
    Phillip Kelm--Palau Brewing Company Manager--

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    • #3
      You may get slow leakage of CO2 out / oxygen in over the anticipated shelf life of the beer. When I worked in a large bottling plant, the ability to twist the crowns was normally indicative of slightly poor performance of the crowner, and we used to adjust the crowner so they wouldn't twist (don't ask me how - this was the engineers job, but I think it was simply the pressure or travel on the crowner heads - H&K filler / crowners). You couldn't tell the difference with a simple go / no go gauge but I was told at the time that the shelf life could be affected.

      We did have problems with the occasional batch of fresh bottles (these lines ran returnable glass - standard at that time throughout much of the UK) which was a manufacturing fault, with very slightly undersized necks, which affected more bottles than if it was the crowner fault. A crowner fault was often down to a single crowner head sticking / damaged, so it would be one in every 12 or 16 (depending on which filler) bottles on a regular basis.
      dick

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      • #4
        Thanks, guys.

        From what research I've done, this appears to be a bottle/crown issue. We're working with our glass/crown supplier to see if we can solve it.
        Timm Turrentine

        Brewerywright,
        Terminal Gravity Brewing,
        Enterprise. Oregon.

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