Corking vs. Capping Mead

Crown caps are perfectly fine, if not better.

Crown caps work fine?
Yay then!
I wanted to ask this myself as I thought I'd prefer to put my mead into 320ML beer bottles than large 750ML wine bottles for the most part.

If you can buy a corker for $20, go for it! Assuming that's a typo, they go for $150-$600 here depending on quality.

You can also crown seal champagne bottles if you like, for the brew to share.

kudapucat said:

If you can buy a corker for $20, go for it! Assuming that's a typo, they go for $150-$600 here depending on quality.

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$150+ Are you insane? This $20 wine corker does the job perfectly fine for me: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Double-hand...SVUC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342741743&sr=8-1

Oh.
No. Not insane. I just dislike hand tools.
I like the lever action ones, like my capper.
Tell me you don't use a hand capper that you hit with a mallet?

Perhaps I have too much money. 'twould explain why I spend it so quick.

The one posted in the link IS a lever action corker. I have one. You put the cork into the little hole in the side, put the top of the bottle into the bottle, then press down on both handles. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI2xIlEZH5o
I have one kind of like it, only instead of it grabbing with pincers on the bottom, it has a round stretchy spring thing. I can't find a picture of my model right now.

kudapucat said:

Perhaps I have too much money. 'twould explain why I spend it so quick.

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That is a nice luxury to have!

This is what I meant by a lever action.

http://www.natural-winemaking.com/photogallery/corker.jpg
www.natural-winemaking.com/photogallery/corker.jpg

Nice, simple, elegant, requires only 2 hands, bottle's not at risk of toppling.

If you are going to do long term aging using crown caps, then consider using the caps specially designed to be oxygen resistant. There appears to be a number of people that have the caps fail over the course of years. Could have been user error too, who knows? Nothing in my house under a crown cap lasts longer than 1 year, so I have no personal experience. With the exception of braggots, I prefer my meads and wines to be corked. Aesthetics you know.

Just a quick note about the corkers shown: the lever-action corker linked to by Wijnand is typically only effective with #7 and #8 corks. The #9 corks are too fat to fit into the necks of most bottles. To use #9's, you need an iris-style corker that compresses the cork before insertion. The floor corker linked by kudapucat likely is an iris-style.

I use a hand-held iris corker and only use #9 corks when bottling in wine bottles. IMO the #9 corks provide a better seal allowing for longer bottle aging. The down side to my corker is that it requires a bit of strength to compress the cork. For reference, my wife is not quite able to compress a #9. Consider asking you LHBS if they'll let you try one out before you buy.

For small batches my corker works great. For 5-gallon batches, I start getting tired towards the last few bottles. If I ever move up to batches larger than 5 gallons, then I will also move up to one of the floor corkers.