Introduction
Ok, you want to do some creative bottle tarting-up but don’t want to go to the trouble of blending hot waxes and glues, suffering permanent burn scars and totally messing up your long suffering wife’s kitchen or even blowing up her oven by using the hot wax dip approach. Here’s a much better, easier, quicker, cheaper and safer way of making your beer bottles much more presentable without upsetting your wife too much.
Those of you that have done a bit of wine making will know that you can buy some heat-shrinkable ‘capsules’ to put over the neck of the wine bottles (normally after the corks have been inserted). These are easy, quick, cheap and safe to use. So can we use these for beer bottles? Unfortunately, the answer is that this is not possible because these capsules are normally too small to fit over the necks of most beer bottles.
After extensive research, it was discovered that the capsules would fit over a standard crown cap but not slide far enough down the bottle neck to be effective. By making use of a relatively modern invention called a pair of scissors, a capsule can be trimmed to enable its full insertion over a beer bottle neck.
Once in place, a heat-gun is used to shrink the capsule around the bottle neck and crown cap. Any heat-gun can be used but a basic heat gun is a fairly inexpensive purchase and you can always use it for other useful things like making crème brûllée or stripping paint off your neighbor’s dog kennel or even his dog – although your neighbor may not appreciate you doing this and his dog certainly won’t. A hair drier is not really strong enough.
Something like this would make a great present for your girlfriend, mother-in-law, window cleaner, etc., to show them how much you really care about them.
Materials
These capsules come in a variety of colors and finishes. The products made for standard wine bottles seem to fit over the necks of standard beer bottles. Don’t get the thick HDPE versions.
Tools
Not much is needed to apply these bottle caps. If you don’t have a hot air blower, then a hair dryer may work or use a gas stove to heat the capsules.
Procedure
Take the scissors and cut the shrinkable capsule to a length that enables the cut capsule to fit fully over the bottle neck so that it rests on the bottle cap. You may have to experiment to get the correct length to cut off but it’s normally about 3/8” (7 mm). Try and trim the capsule so that the cut is clean and square unless you’re looking for that hard to get but very inviting rustic look.
Place the trimmed capsule over the capped bottle neck and that ensure that it is fully pushed down so that the top of the capsule is in contact with the bottle cap.
Put the bottle in a big bowl – we don’t want to make a mess greater than is necessary if the bottle splits or explodes, do we?
Turn on the heat gun and aim it at the capsule from an angle of about 45° above. Hold the heat gun at about 6 inches away from the capsule and slowly spin the bottle as you apply heat.
This process might take a bit of practice and, so, perhaps try things out with some empty bottles before risking your prized beer. The key is to get high heat to the capsule but not let the glass underneath get too hot or it may shatter from heat stress and cause a big mess that will get you into trouble. Heating from above keeps the capsule located on the bottle, heating from below will tend to push it up and above the top of the bottle. Too much heat and the crown cap can start to cut into the capsule so you need to adopt the Goldilock’s approach in applying the heat – not too much and not too little.
Once the capsule has fully shrunk, remove the heat gun and let the bottle cool before moving it around too much or giving it to someone as a present.
It’s often a good idea to complement to the newly improved cap with a nice bottle label as shown in the photo above. The nice pretty bow gives the final coup de grâce.
Opening the Tarted-Up Bottle
The capsule is very easy to remove by pulling the tab provided (a bit like a hand grenade).
Alternatively, you can use the brute force and manly method of leaving the capsule in place and just using a bottle opener as usual and the nice, colorful and inviting capsule will be brutally ripped off the bottle with the cap if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, the cap will get stuck in the capsule and remain half off the bottle which in turn may shatter and create a huge mess which your wife will certainly notice. Take my advice and pull the bloody tab!