Bottles loosing their carbonation

[WishboneBrewery]

I'm confused, the beer I brewed on April 25, 2009 and bottled on May 6, 2009... I left it for a week in the warm and it carbonated up lovely viewtopic.php?f=3&t=23339 , since then its been at our cellar temperature of between 11 and 15 degrees C

The last 3 bottles I've opened seem to have very little fizz to them, 2 different batches of crown caps and various sorts of bottles... Other beer with the same crown caps still has plenty of fizz... so it it possible that something in the beer causes a loss of carbonation?

The beer still tastes all right its just lacking much of a fizz... any ideas? Should I put it back in the warm at 20 deg C?

Thanks

[arturobandini]

What bottles? I bottled some bitter yonks ago and some of the bottles were flat and some sparkling and I put it down to the caps I was using on the bottles and the capper perhaps not getting a tight fix. The caps were well crimped and in place though so it wasn't a case of a half assed job...for once!

[WishboneBrewery]

Maybe time to invest in a Bench Capper, but so far I've not had this problem with any other bottles and I must have done a few Hundred now since I started in January. Its been a mixed batch of bottles, I'll try another bottle maybe a 330ml Leffe bottle and see how that is. You would think it would be the seal that isn't good enough, its the obvious explanation.... just weird its not happened before.

Cheers

[WishboneBrewery]

Ahh, just cracked another... 330ml bottle and its properly carbonated (tastes loads better with its proper fizz), I've ordered a bench capper from Brewmart anyway, it will hopefully do a better and more reliable job than the 2-lever Hand capper.

[arturobandini]

Yeah some bottles need a thorough going over. Wychwood are universally despised by twin handled cappers everywhere but my twin handler is a bit knackered on one side anyway so I have to spin it and do the cap twice each time anyway (no wonder I hate bottling) and this seems to work well on these bottles. Bench Cappers are definitely the way forward but I'm reluctant to spend any money on equipment when I can just buy malt and hops and plod on with what I've already got which works..ish.

[WishboneBrewery]

fair point, I'm tempted to go and give all my caps a Re-Cap-squeeze on my problem batch (I must have been having a weak moment or something) then stick them back in the warm for a bit.
Brewmart seemed the cheapest place to get a Bench capper.