I have a Zyliss I bought in the mid 90’s that I love. It has a foil cutter built in to it which is a great notion and very convenient.
Does yours have such a feature?
Brabantia also makes the best ironing boards on the planet.
I really don’t know why people buy all these gimmicky bottle opener. Every damn year just before christmas there is a new one that popped out and everyone is buying it. Most of the time it is worthless to OK at best. From my experience, a good old “limonadier” or “sommelier” knife is where you should throw your money at. Simple, elegant, works great every time and will last decades.
The brabantia corkscrew isn’t new at all : it was created in 1985. In Belgium and the Netherlands, it’s quite a classic, along with their bins, ironing boards and letterboxes.
http://pulltaps.com/en/corkscrews-/8-corkscrew-rb-500-basic.html
Or
It’s called a wine key in the business. No matter how much you like your gimmick opener it’s got it’s failure point. Mostly they’re too big or two slow. They tend to struggle with different stopper materials or bottle sizes (houdinis and rabbits in particular hate magnums, plastic corks, and dense composites). Almost all of them have short life spans.
I’ve used both of the linked models to open thousands and thousands of bottles of wine. They’re cheap as hell, durable and fast. I use the true because I find a single hinge faster, it has a better blade, and is more comfortable for popping beers. But the don’t last as long as the pulltaps, and are more likely to chip bottles and break corks.
They’ll open anything, are easy to carry, easy use, and you can afford to buy them by the bag.
Two things.
Buy a proper bottle of wine (sparkling).
Saber it with anything laying around.
I wish I had videos of my sabering shenanigans.
I imagine Errol Flynn would have had a go.
Does anyone have experiences with the air pump bottle openers? I’m totally happy with a sommelier knife (simple, working, flexible, elegant) but I love the principle of the pump thingy - but is it reliable?
The gimmicky corkscrews all seem like the sort of things advertised to those dolts on infomercials who fail at the most basic tasks. The one nonstandard feature I dig is an integrated foil cutter that saves you from having to fiddle around with the little blade that’s always too hard to open and never sharp enough. (The other funny wine accessories are those special caps for leftover half-empty bottles. As if!)
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[quote=“renke, post:9, topic:67848”]
Does anyone have experiences with the air pump bottle openers?
[/quote]My grandparents have one. It works just fine, but I don’t really see the advantages over the one from the article or a winged one. I can help thinking “Sky Mall gift.”
I see, thanks!
The model you picture is actually pretty flimsy I’ve got a couple in a drawer some where. And the blade also has some other uses, it can be used to quickly yank the cage off sparkling wine, and one time I ended up serving a wine that was closed with a glass plug. They’re also used to trim down champagne corks to re-close bottles (though there’s better ways to go about that). Only way to open it was to slide the blade in between the stopper and the bottle neck and twist. And I can tell you the blade on the Pulltaps and True models are definitely sharp enough, though the double hinge models are admittedly hard to open.
Beyond that you really should be removing the entire capsule, not just the part that a dedicated foil cutter takes off. Or at the very least entirely below the lip. You really want no contact between foil and wine, and any capsule (plastic or foil) left on the neck can collect wine. Causing drips and sanitary issues. Mostly (especially if its foil) you can just grip the capsule firmly and twist while pulling and the whole shebang will come off right away. If its taped down (Italians tend to be with that DOCG blue tape) or shrink plastic its best to cut a line vertically from the lip to the bottom of the capsule. Then you just poke the blade tip in, pinch the material and yank to the side. Should come off in one or two pieces. Much quicker and cleaner than cutting that perfect disk.
And those special caps (either just the lever plugs or vacu-vin systems) are actually pretty useful. When I’m selling wine by the glass I will have open bottles at the end of the night. Anything I can do to reduce spoilage is a good idea.
The ones with the needle and the Co2 cart?
It works, but only on standard sized bottles with real cork of a particular quality. Magnums it can’t open at all. Plastic and composite corks give it conniptions. And real corks of a lower quality just don’t contain the pressure well enough, so they may or may not open. I’ve never tried them on smaller sized bottles but I imagine they would open them a lot more aggressively. Its admittedly really cool when it works though.
Cork?
My wine comes with a little tap on the front of the box. Much easier.
Great, thanks a lot! I hoped for such detailed reports.
Oh and refills are hard to track down. Even the store we bought ours at (stocking stuffer for mom she loves wine gadgets) stopped stocking the refills. Supposedly standard Co2 carts (like you’d use for a pellet gun) are at much higher pressure and will blow the fucker up.
Sure, high-volume commercial use has a different set of priorities, even though people often make the mistake of assuming that “commercial” automatically means “better.” It often does mean “sturdier,” but a real commercial stove, for example, is actually not well-suited to a home kitchen. I figured that since the post is about a stocking-stuffer type gadget that we were talking about home use. I don’t go through enough wine to need a cast-iron bullet solution; this thing should last me the rest of my life.
What I really need is a keychain bottle opener that’s compact, not made of softer metal than bottlecaps (Who thought aluminum was a good material for this?!), and open-ended so I don’t get my finger stuck in it when my hand is digging around in my pocket for something else.
Yeah light home use is all I’ve ever used that sort of cork screw for, didn’t hold up. The foil cutter barely worked from the go (I think the blade is plastic), the screw bent, and the plastic body cracked. Inside of a few months. Its still around, buts its seriously janky. Currently fulfills the role of TSA sacrificial wine key.
And I grew up in a house with a commercial stove in it. And Jesus H Christ you have no idea just how objectively better it is than any other gas stove I’ve run into. The only potential downside is the particular (25 year old) model in question is not as completely insulated as a standard home model. So it requires a brick back stop to protect the walls from excess heat. Also it needs a commercial grade smoke hood. So you couldn’t just drop it into your existing kitchen, but my folks installed said stove during a complete kitchen remodel so it was easy to accommodate. I also have numerous friends who’s kitchens have contained commercial stoves (usually to accommodate a catering business, or because a previous owner/resident did so). And those more modern commercial stoves were just as good at shaming your silly consumer grade stove without the brick backstop. More heat, more space, more consistency, longer life span, far more durable, endlessly serviceable and repairable. And frankly you can buy used/referbed ones for WAY less than your high end consumer brands. More people should do it.
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