I just wanted a caipirinha, not a three-dimensional object-manipulation puzzle

November 8, 2008 6:25 PM

How do I get this goofy cap on a bottle open? It's plastic and it appears to have a moving part inside. This is a bottle of cachaça, specifically Velho Barreiro, if that makes any difference.
posted by grimmelm to food & drink (10 comments total)

It's hard to see in the picture, but it looks like it might have the same top as a bottle of Japanese soda I had once - Ramune, in which case you push the marble bit into the bottle. The wikipedia page I linked to has details.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 6:38 PM on November 8, 2008

This may be a stupid question, but have you tried just pouring it?
It looks a bit like the funny flow controlling (I assume) tops I've seen before on alcohol bottles.

Otherwise, perhaps it's supposed to have a spout pushed onto it, so maybe you could open it by making a suitably sized cylinder out of something like cardboard.
posted by lucidium at 6:44 PM on November 8, 2008

Call a liquor store and ask them?
posted by amanda at 6:47 PM on November 8, 2008

According to Chowhound, you can "pry up the plastic disc a little bit" and then it will pour.
posted by bcwinters at 6:52 PM on November 8, 2008

You shouldn't "open" that! It's open already.

All bottles of liquor in Brazil have this. Some sort of regulation. Just pour it. If liquid doesn't come out, give it a vigorous shake holding the bottle upside down and it should start pouring. There's a little plastic ball inside this plastic cage that controls the flow of the drink. Sometimes it gets stuck.

Boa caipirinha!
posted by AnyGuelmann at 7:01 PM on November 8, 2008

Many Spanish and Italian spirits bottles have the same tamper-proof fitting. It should just pour through the grommet thing, albeit in a glug-glug-gluggy way.
posted by holgate at 7:15 PM on November 8, 2008

Yup - it's not a cap, it's a thingy that restricts flow - required by regulations usually.

They are notoriously difficult to remove.

It should not be getting in your way - you should be able to pour just fine. You may have to give a bottle a bit of a flick while upside-down to get it to start flowing - there is a little plastic bit that should move out of the way the first time.

They are quite handy, actually - you get used to them. They restrict the flow-rate to something manageable, and also protect you if you knock the open bottle over.
posted by TravellingDen at 7:49 PM on November 8, 2008

Caipirinhas have been had. None of these answers was directly helpful, but together with the Chowhound link, they gave me the confidence to just go ahead and break stuff.

The whitish plastic thing is not a marble. Vigorous shaking does not induce pourage. You can't push the plastic top inwards; it's connected to the sides.

I took a screwdriver to the clear plastic bit and broke off the center disc. That loosened things up enough that the whitish interior plastic thing could move up when the bottle is inverted, and that opened up a channel for the delicious cachaça to flow.
posted by grimmelm at 7:53 PM on November 8, 2008

I know it's too late, but:

I've had bottles where the cap actually has a specially-shaped piece in it: you screw the cap on extra tight, the piece in the cap pushes something out of the way inside the neck the bottle. When you take off the cap after that, everything pours out fine. What does the inside of the cap look like?
posted by dkg at 8:18 PM on November 8, 2008

yeah, dkg reminded me of something similar: that screwing in the cap on some of those bottles breaks a seal. There's sometimes a clear hard plastic ring that snaps away at first opening, either at the base of the spout or inside the cap and you're meant to remove it.
posted by holgate at 9:11 PM on November 8, 2008