[reverseapachemaster]

I use a regular ball point pen to twist the cages. Like the cheap ones you find in hotel rooms. Slide the pen so the side of the wire cage is at the middle of the pen. Twist the cage closed and then slide the pen out. It leaves a handle roughly the same size as commercial bottles.

[klickitat jim]

Slide 3/16ID 5/15OD tubing inside 5/16ID tubing, then slide that over caging tool. Dipping in hot water helps.


Before... After


Tip: you can't twist them banjo tight with the tubing trick or the wire loop cinches down on the tubing and you're stuck. But the cage doesn't have to be NASA tight, just enough to grip the lip

[jeffy]

I remember on a tour of the Korbell winery in Sonoma that they told us that they made sure the number of twists on the cage was nine and one half turns.  I told this to my friend at Saint Somewhere, where he has volunteers use a cordless screw gun and an "L" shaped rod to twist the cage wire.  He thought that was pretty funny.  I always count how many twists it takes to free up a cork cage.

[klickitat jim]

It appears to be 10 on the little hole, 5 on the other

[Phil_M]

Digging this back up, as I'm about to bottle a saison/golden strong ale.

I've got a Ferrari floor corker, will be using that. Initial tests that without any carbonation behind the cork it's still impossible to remove by hand. We'll see what happens when there is beer inside.

Any more input on what carbonation level I should use? These are the bottles I'm using:

http://www.annapolishomebrew.com/co/beer-bottles-750ml-belgian-cork

[smkranz]

My experience is that the longer the corks are in the bottle, the easier they are to get out, I suppose because they've been compressed longer, and there's less resistance if the cork isn't trying as hard to expand back to its original shape.

The bottles and corks can pretty much hold whatever carbonation level you want.  My typical rate for a Belgian style is pretty standard 5 oz. (142g) priming sugar per 5 gallons, sometimes a scootch more for Saisons.  I also re-pitch some fresh yeast.

[Phil_M]

I'm probably going to bottle tonight, and I definitely plan on reyeasting, probably with US-05.

I plan on carbing to 4 vols. If the old 90's Natty Boh bombers that I've got survived a 4.5 vol beer that also ended up infected, I'll want my money back if the Belgian bottles can't handle 4.