Portuguese Double Lever Corker

A very useful and effective product.

Works great. Fast shipping

Easy to handle and use. Worked perfectly.

This manual corker works. But it takes lots of muscle power to seat the #8 cork. We had over 20 liters of homemade wine to cork. First try at cork made me think -- this is hard! My solution was to extend the handles (and thus give more leverage) of the corker by placing a six inch 1" inch internal diameter iron pipe over the handle (this is usually 1 1/4 pipe with 1" ID). It fits perfectly, tightly, and gives a few more inches of leverage. If I had it handy, I would have used an eight inch pipe, for ever more leverage. See photo. The extra leverage and grip diameter made corking a couple cases of homemade (and excellent homemade) wine much easier. I highly suggest this modification -- easy and cheap. I would suggest going with 8" pipes as handle extensions, but I just had 6" pieces at hand. It works, and it certainly will not stress the corker. And if you are doing more than a couple cases, get a corker stand with more leverage..... We did not need that. There you have the result, in photo. Our very fine wine from summer, now in cellar for another six months or so.

It does the job. Easy to use.

Great product at a good price, especially compared to floor models which cost a lot more and would take up a lot of space. This handy portable model requires some muscle to use, but if you steam your corks for 2 minutes, they are not only clean but also easily squeezed into bottles. If you are just corking a few bottles, microwave some water to boiling, then toss in your corks, stir, cover, and time 2 minutes. Have your bottles ready, fish out your corks after the 2 minutes are up, and cork away. With number 9 straight corks you get a good, tight seal that will withstand airplane cargo hold pressures without leaking. My only complaint is that on the one I have, the corks are often a bit lower in the bottle neck than level, and sometimes seat a bit crooked despite my best efforts. I think this may be more than operator error. Overall, though, I'd rate this 5 stars. I've used it as a hobbyist for months and it's really outperformed my expectations.

Over 4,000 reviews and only one video has been posted here, for a product that was delivered without any instructions. So I’m adding this to give better context regarding a lot of misinformation regarding this Portuguese hand corker, which can help add better clarity regarding preparation for use. First, use no. 8, #8 sized corks. They’re the proper size for effective bottling. Also, do a search on soaking corks for wine bottling, there are some wise entries posted in winemaking forums - PLEASE read them and you’ll see a pattern regarding corking prep. As you consider that, this newbie tried removing the white plastic cork guide from my corker, because I thought, “no way can a cork fit through the bottom part of the plastic!” How wrong I was. Finding an online tube you video, I saw a guy corking with the plastic in place and was happy that I hadn’t broken my corker. That white plastic compresses corks! The real clarity and ease happened when I read how it seemed easier to soak corks before bottling. One person suggested 5-10 minutes. I used a sudsy solution of purified water mixed with a product called StarSan (which sanitizes without any adverse effect on brews or ferments), and used several corks that were soaking at least 15 minutes in a ziplock snack sized baggie, because it takes me time to fill each bottle while maintaining conditions. Test your corker on a couple bottles to get the hang of corking, before doing it with your ferment. Gauge how you’ll fill to leave a gap of air between 1/2-3/4 inch from your fill line and where you expect the bottom of the cork to settle. Shake off a wet cork and place it in the opening to the white plastic guide (which again, compresses the cork). Start the handles down and this is where you can center the driving pin atop your cork before driving it through, which some have found issue with. I’ve had no problem taking just a few seconds to center the shaft. Then apply even downward pressure, and you’ll hear that pop in the video I posted, as the cork squeezes through the plastic compression shaft and into your bottle. The cork seating that I experience is maybe 1/8” below the bottle top. But what’s important is that the extra soaking relaxes the cork fibers, allowing it to squeeze through the shaft and into the bottle. This tool has been around for generations. The tool design works as long as you give as much love to the bottling process as you have toward your fermentation. Think about it. The length of time from yeasted juice to bottling can be months - so please take a few more moments to ensure proper corking as well, which literally puts that cap on your labor of love.

It works well enough. It is laborious if you're like my wife and have no upper body strength whatsoever. Lol I ended up upgrading to a counter top bottle corner for her sake. But as I said, it worked well enough for the time I was using it.