There’s something special in corked bottles and every homebrewer sooner or later asks themselves if should they cork their beer.
I adore corks, they give your homebrew a sophisticated look and they have been proven to work just as good as caps or even better throughout history. However, the question is whether you should bottle your homebrew beer with corks is there a catch?
You can use corks for bottling beer but it won’t add any technical benefit besides a different look to your bottle. Moreover, using corks for bottling beer introduces more room for mistakes and infection.
Let’s see why are corks really used in some beer bottles and what’s my take on should you and how should you do it.
Are there beer bottles with corks?
Traditionally, there are Belgium-style beer bottles that only fit corks and these bottles are a popular choice for certain craft beer styles like Trappist or wheat beers. These bottles are different from common bottles homebrewers use and you can’t cap them because their throat is of a different design.
You can find these bottles at local stores or on Amazon, so if you are looking for something new to introduce into your brewing game, you can!
Besides corks, you’ll also need a muselet (wire cage) that serves as support, so a cork doesn’t explode out of a bottle. Muselet is important because beer is carbonized and the pressure built from Co2 inside the bottle can easily push the cork out.
Always use fresh and new corks because if they are of questionable quality, they could host bacteria which is impossible to remove by sanitization solution. This is a similar problem to when you have small scratches in a plastic fermenter, the small cracks are perfect for bacteria to hide in and later infect your brew.
Why should you cork beer?
There is one real reason why you would want to cork your beer and truth to be told, all other reasons you will hear are simply fabricated for marketing purposes.
The cork provides a somewhat better seal because it fits deeper into a bottle, so it has a stiffer contact with the glass. This is a nice feature for long conditioning (over a year), but even then it’s questionable how necessary they are compared to caps.
The beer is rarely ever conditioned for that long and even if it is it’s usually conditioned in kegs or barrels prior to being bottled, so corks don’t have a single real functionality for beer conditioning in most cases.
However, in our modern world, most beers are either canned or bottled with a cap and put on a shelf, and smart breweries know that if they change a few things in appearance, the customers will perceive their beer as something different and better.
Corks had been used for a long time when modern caps didn’t exist and there’s nothing wrong with them, but if you find one on a beer bottle today, it’s purely marketing. But hey, many people like the vintage design and I am one of them, so if I know that beer is good and has a nice appearance as a bonus, I am buying it and taking the bottle home to display it on my fridge.
Should you bottle your beer in wine bottles?
Wine bottles are not made for beer and shouldn’t be used for beer bottling. The problem with wine bottles is that they are not made to sustain pressure caused by Co2 buildup and beer is always pretty carbonized within the bottle. The glass on wine bottles is thin and if you bottle your beer in them it can cause bottle bombs.
Second thing, have you noticed how corks on champaign bottles are always secured with a muselet, but wine bottles are not? This is an important safety precaution for any high-carbonized brew because corks can be pushed out of the bottle from high pressure.
Wine is not carbonized so it’s easy to deal with, but brews like beer, champagne, or sparky mead aren’t!
How do you store beer with corks?
You should store your corked beer upwards at all times while in storage. There are two reasons why it is important.
- You don’t want your beer to be in direct contact with a cork in storage because it can pull out some bad tastes into your beer.
- When the beer is placed horizontally it allows for the yeast (sediment) to collect at the sides and around the cork. This significantly reduces the experience once you drink the beer because it makes it muddy.
- Despite the advice to keep the bottle horizontally to keep the cork wet, It’s impossible for a cork to dry out because there will always be humidity inside a bottle.
How long does corked beer last?
Corked beer will last just as long as any canned or capped beer as long as all storing measurements are respected. To increase the shelf time of your beer always keep it at the right temperature (around 50°F) and outside of the light.
If you opened your corked beer you can recork it and drink it later by temporarily storing it in the fridge or any cool place. However, any opened beer should be consumed on the same day and ideally within hours in order to enjoy it while it’s still fresh and didn’t begin to degrade.
Agglomerated corks will last up to 5 years, while natural corks can last for up to 20 years. However, storing a beer for a such long time is rarely the case with homebrewed beer.
Alcohol doesn’t evaporate through a cork
For anyone who worries about their beer getting flat or that the alcohol will evaporate if they use a cork, it won’t as long as the cork is properly inserted and the storing conditions are met.
Can you reuse corks?
Never reuse corks, it’s not worth the risk. You see, corks are super cheap and there’s no point in reusing them when they can bring so many troubles and ruin your homebrew.
While you can reuse caps, corks are not made of metal and they have many tiny punctures and micro holes in which nasty bacteria can find a room to sleep. Once a bottle is opened, the danger is introduced, so always use new corks and you’ll have one thing less to cause you sleepless nights.