Reusing a Westmalle Tripel jeroboam

[joecool]

Hi, me and a couple of friends enjoyed a Westmalle Tripel jeroboam on boxing day. Since we're planning to try brewing a Westmalle tripel clone soon, it would be nice to reuse the bottle.

The issue is capping it. The cap they used is big, 35mm or something close. I've tried googling and found nothing about them. Does anyone know where you can get that sized caps, and a device that can handle them?

 

[The Baron]

Standard bottle take 26mm Champagne sized necks etc take 29mm which can be got and capped with a bench capper that can do dual sizes.
My guess is they are 29mm if so it is doable

 

[joecool]

Standard bottle take 26mm Champagne sized necks etc take 29mm which can be got and capped with a bench capper that can do dual sizes.
My guess is they are 29mm if so it is doable

Thanks for the reply. It's definitely bigger than the 29mm bottles I've come across (I currently use 26mm bottles). To me it measures 35mm. I'm wondering if it's a custom thing westmalle did. It looks huge when you see it in person.

 

[The Baron]

Must be a special size then for westmalle

 

[Agentgonzo]

You can always cork it.

Keep a beer bottle/champagne cork. Stick the base in a vice or something to compress it and put a cable tie around it. Keep squeezing and cable tying until it's narrow enough to fit in the neck of the bottle.

Once it does, put the cork into the bottle up to the cable tie. Cut off the cable tie (it should stay in the bottle). Then whack with the buttom of a shoe or rubber mallet to put it fully in.

Then re-apply some wire to hold it in

 

[Rodcx500z]

Try dropping them an email on how much you liked the beer, and you would like to reuse the bottle you never know they may have some

 

[Pavros]

You can buy plastic champagne stoppers and wire cages, basically a plastic version of the corks on 750ml belgian beer bottles. See if you can buy larger versions if a standard size won't fit. That might do the job.

 

[YeastFace]

The crown caps are 36mm, but are a specialist product so you may struggle to find without buying in bulk.

https://www.webpackaging.com/en/portals/eurocapeurocork/assets/11671308/crown-corks-36-mm/
https://www.crealisgroup.com/en/international/collection/closures/bidule/
https://eurocapeurocork.com/catalog/crown-corks-36-mm-64.html

 

[joecool]

Thanks everyone, great info. @YeastFace thanks for the link. Looks like getting the crowner would also be a costly challenge.

@Agentgonzo , @Pavros I'll look into corking. Might be a far more reasonable way of doing it, thanks.

Will report back in a few weeks if I have success

 

[joecool]

Reporting back. We used the Belgian style corks from TMM on the jeroboam and a couple of other bottles such as a chimay reserve bottle. The smaller bottles (75cl) were really good but the jeroboam was flat when we tried it. Very strange as the cork was a tight fit and we did batch priming.

Not sure what went wrong.