February 26, 2026 • 35 mins
This now-ubiquitous container closure got its start in the 1800s and has been through a lot of innovation since then. Anney and Lauren follow the threads of the science and history of the screw cap (yes, including for wine).
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of iHeartRadio. I'm any
Reason and.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm Lauren vogl Bam, and today we have an episode
for you about screw caps, screw tops, screw top enclosures
for containers.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yes, I then go buy many names. Sure. Sure, we're
continuing our look into closures of different types. Yeah. Yes, which,
by the way, every time we do one of these,
at the end, I have more questions than I generally
came in with, and I want to investigate more. So
(00:43):
I think it's a fun mini series. Yeah. Absolutely. Was
there any particular reason this was on your mind, Laura.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
It's been on my mind ever since the last for
this entire ever since we started looking into closures. I
was like, ooh, this involves materials, science and mechanics. That's
cool on a food show. Let's go into that some more. Yes,
(01:12):
and indeed it does.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
And I think this gives you a real if you
needed it, I'll look into how nerdy we are. Yeah
that we were excited to look into this. However, we
did come we ran into some trouble researching this one.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Surprisingly, Yeah, right, there were just you know, this is
a very podcaster problem to have, but there aren't enough
industry websites like of businesses like production companies that have
extensive archival material about their company history readily available to us.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Ridiculous is what it is, absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
And or Google is breaking under our feet every day.
So I don't know, I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
It could be both.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, both are both are issues, I strongly believe. But yes,
but we persevered. Uh and I and I believe we
have an episode for you, Yes, we absolutely do.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Uh. And it is highly related to our past episode
enclosures wine stoppers.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, cork crown caps ramine is a great one for
cod cod bottle closures.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Yeah, uh huh. You can also see our Sparkling Wine episodes,
which were our very first so you know it was
some great a.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Little claimer there. We were new, we were fresh out
the bucks.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
We we definitely were. But I guess that brings us
to our question. Sure, screw caps what are they? Well?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Screw caps are a type of closure for containers that involve,
at the user end physically spinning a cap designed with
a spiral thread on its interior off of a container
with a matching spiral thread on its lips exterior The
(03:28):
idea is that this has snugly and securely fit the
cap onto the container, and you can easily remove it
and then put it back on again if you so choose,
and in this way you can contain anything larger than
the spaces remaining between the cap and the container. The
fit can be made tighter, even liquid or air tight,
(03:50):
by placing some kind of layer of soft material on
the inside of the cap, either on the thread or
at the top, that will form to the lip of
the container. All kinds of containers, for all kinds of
purposes are designed this way because it's a simple and
effective mechanical design that isn't very expensive to manufacture, and
it allows the user to yes easily open and close
(04:13):
the container over and over again with no special equipment
other than a decent ability to grip and twist depending
on the materials and process you use to seal the container.
This means that you can package just about any solid
or liquid. But since we are extensibly a food show,
let's say anything from like powdered herbs to whole spices,
(04:36):
to prepared soups and sauces, to fruit or vegetables or
meat packed in liquid, to beverages from milk to soda
to yes wine. Products from industrial manufacturers or that are
meant for long term storage will usually have some kind
of safety feature built into this cap to assure you
that the contents have arrived to you, like sanitarily sealed.
(05:00):
Screw caps are one of those inventions that, like you
don't necessarily think about, but are absolutely everywhere, to the
extent that when you do think about them, you are
you're forced to conclude that like sometimes, just sometimes humans
really figure a thing out.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah, it really is everywhere. Doing this research, I started
to think of all of the products I have that
use a screw top.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Yeah, I lot. Yeah. I spent a decent amount of
time wandering around my house looking at containers. While I
was writing this outline. I was like, no, really, how
does it work? Oh?
Speaker 1 (05:42):
I see, okay, cool, totally normal thing to do.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
It was the first time I've ever had to be like, Bruce,
don't try to drink the contro.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
See, yeah, Bruce, the kitten does not many contrue what
I will say.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Although if she was drunk this whole time, it would
kind of explain a lot.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Anyway, Okay, so the materials that are used to make
a screw cap container depend a lot on the properties
of the product meant to be stored, perhaps obviously, but
I'm going to say a lot of obvious things in
this episode, but I think that they bear saying, so
you know, really you can make a screw cap, jar
or bottle out of anything. It does help if the
(06:31):
container is made out of something more rigid and the
cap is made out of something more malleable, And again,
you do get a lot better of a seal if
there's a bit inside the cap that's extra malleable and
will like form to the rigid container lip each time
you screw the cap on. But beyond that, like you know,
the container can be glass or metal, or plastic or ceramic.
(06:52):
The lid is most often metal or plastic, but can
be glass or ceramic too. The cap liner can be cork, rubber,
some kind of soft plastic, or paper coated with metal
or plastic or both to make it less permeable but
also less expensive than straight plastic. The things you're looking
to watch out for in the design here are well
(07:14):
like a the content's escaping. That's not the most effective
way to package something. B the contents reacting with the
container materials and see the contents staying fresh both while
sealed in the package and in some capacity after the
package has been opened by the user for the first time.
So you're necessarily looking at different materials and designs for
(07:36):
something to contain something thick like processed peanut butter versus
thin like olive oil, versus acidic like vinegar versus meant
to be used fresh within a short period of time
like orange juice. Yeah, we would need to be a
whole different show in order to cover how these materials
(08:00):
work and like how the different types of containers are
developed and produced. Like damn it, gym, I'm a food
podcast or not a material science expert. But very basically,
plastic is such a useful material for screw caps and
the containers that they go on because it can be
(08:21):
melted and injected into a mold, and the mold can
be pretty detailed, and the plastic will cool and harden
into that shape and probably only need like minor finishing
like trimming to get the rough edges off when it
comes out of the mold. Plastic is unfortunately extremely convenient
and inexpensive to work with aluminum screw caps that go
(08:44):
onto glass bottles like wine or soda bottles work a
little bit differently. Basically, you mold the glass bottle to
have a thread at the outer rim, and then you
press an aluminum cap onto the thread that it takes
the exact form of that threaded neck. But because aluminium
(09:06):
alone wouldn't seal super well and could corrode from contact
with liquids, you line the aluminum with what's called in
the industry wad real sexy. This is modernly some kind
of soft plastic, often several layers of slightly different soft plastics,
and sometimes a little bit of paper and metal like
tin or more aluminum in there. There will be a
(09:27):
thick disc of this stuff in the top of the
cap and a little bit along the inner sides. So
when you press the cap onto the bottleneck, the wad
forms the secure seal with the lip and the sides
of the neck, and the firmer aluminum on the outside
holds it in place and in shape. It's really very clever,
(09:48):
and the design can incorporate all kinds of little features
that just help secure the cap and make it more
or less resealable. These days, there are all kinds of
material science innovations being made for different needs. You know,
like I saw some plant fiber packaging that can be
(10:08):
used in place of plastic in some applications to reduce
dependence on plastics. Containers made with more recycled material and
or from materials that are more recyclable. There is, in
particular a lot of work going into producing multi layer
caps with very precise levels of air permeability for the
(10:32):
wine industry. As we discussed in our corek episode, wines
generally want a small amount of airflow in and out
of a sealed bottle so that the wine develops a
bit while it's in there. More on that in the
history section.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yes, yes, indeed. Well what about the nutrition?
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Uh, do not eat product containers unless you find yourself
in some kind of like Willy Wonka situation.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Good advice, I think, yeah, good advice. Yeah, all right,
Well we do have some numbers for you.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah. So, just out of curiosity, while I was wandering
around my home looking at containers, I did account to
see how many products I use on like a weekly
basis that have a screw cap enclosure, and it's like
fifteen to twenty on the daily. It's more like five
to ten and more cosmetics than foods, mostly because I'm
(11:27):
not cooking from scratch every day, but like, yeah, when
I do cook, like so many of my seasonings, both
both liquid and solid, come in screw cap containers.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yep, agreed.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Yeah, the beverage industry is the largest share of the
very large market for screw caps, with pharma and cosmetics
trailing behind. And when you look at wine closures specifically,
as of twenty sixteen, in the International Wine Challenge, which
(12:01):
is this big industry wine rating an award body, twenty
six percent of wines from around the world that were
entered we're sealed with screw caps. A little bit of
a quarter, not too shabby. In contrast, though, of the
entries from Australia, eighty nine percent were screw caps.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yep. That sounds about right, m h. And even though
the screw cap is so ubiquitous, people do love writing
about that wine part. So we are going to talk
about that in the history.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, pretty extensively. And we are going to get into
that history as soon as we get back from a
quick break for a word from our sponsors, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you, so yes, we are
going to be talking a lot about wine in this episode,
because that's what everybody seems to be writing about when
it comes to screwtop caps. For now, I just added
all the words in there.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yeah sure, why not?
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Yeah? Yeah sure. So if you haven't listened to the
episode we did on cork, but we did touch on
other wine stoppers, definitely go do that. A lot of
what we're going to talk about does have to do
with wine. But yeah, screwtops have been around and used
for all kinds of things. It's sort of frustrating that
(13:32):
no one is writing about them that we could find.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yeah, because I'm like, this has been around since the
eighteen fifties, so yes, you'd think.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
You said it's used for all kinds of things. All right.
Since food, drink, and in this case particularly alcohol, storage
has been a thing, the question of how to best
store these items has been one that's caused a lot
of innovation. And yeah, if you've listened to our very
first episode on sparkling wine, you know that the pressures
(14:02):
built by fermentation led to explosions of bottles and legitimate
concern at the time when they didn't understand what was happening.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
They were like, is the devil in the cellar right
now exactly, And yeah, throughout history, containers for foods and
drinks were made out of something hard like glass or ceramic,
and were sealed by things like cork or wax or
combination of both. Sometimes other stuff found its way in
there as well, but those were like the main main
ways to seal up a container. However, these containers could
(14:34):
not be pressure sealed, so fresh products couldn't be made
shelf stable through canning. If you wanted to preserve something
that wasn't already relatively self preserving, like vinegar or honey,
your choices were basically to dry it out with heat
or by packing it in salt or sugar, or to
pickle it. And this is how a lot of the
(14:56):
traditional foods that we enjoy today were developed. But none
of these preserves methods were perfect.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Right, And another issue in this conversation when it comes
to wine, particularly as discussed in our wine Stoppers episode,
is cork taint. In simplest terms, this is when cork,
the traditional wine stopper, is tainted with TCA, which gives
it an unpleasant taste and smell. It's really bad. I've
experienced it before. The impact of that was enough that
(15:24):
wine producers, specifically, we're looking for a new solution to this,
to cork, to this stopper. And yes, this is why
you might get asked to smell a cork at a
restaurant if you order a bottle of wine. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
The answer, the correct answer in that situation is not
do I like this wine? It is does it smell
like a wet dish rag?
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Yep, exactly. Meanwhile, there was the issue of shipping wines
from places like Australia, wherein the length of the export
time allowed for more chance of cork taint during the transport,
so Australian wine producers were looking for options outside of cork. Simultaneously,
(16:07):
French bottle manufacturer Le Bouchon Mecanique was working on a solution.
They had been approached by Australian wineries and in nineteen
fifty nine they came up with the screw cap for wine.
They called it the Stelle cap. Then the caps were
repurposed from the bottles of other spirits. So this was
(16:29):
a big deal. And while this is the most recent
and perhaps most notable iteration of the screw cap, because
wine producers typically didn't use this type of closure. Screw
caps were already in use for things like beer and
some food items and had been for a long time.
In fact, a lot of folks trace the beginning of
the screw cap to the invention or at least the
(16:51):
patenting of the Mason jar with a screw cap in
eighteen fifty eight by John Landis Mason. He came up
with a design for a square shaped jar with a
threaded neck and lid and a rubber seal so that
it could be airtight. This innovation greatly improved the preservation
of food at the time, and it allowed people with
(17:11):
access to them greater food safety and convenience, and a
way to preserve their own foods or beverages at home.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, this was a time of a lot of innovations
in the bottling and canning space thanks to a number
of things, but like a lot of them had to
do with the Industrial Revolution ramping up manufacturing and also
a number of like materials technologies being improved. For example,
the cod neck bottle was patented in eighteen seventy two.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Right, and when it comes to beverages specifically, a fellow
named Dan Reinolds out of the UK patented a screwtop
for whiskey.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
In like the eighteen nineties. I want to say, yeah, yes.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yes, but it never really got any traction, in part
because it had some functional issues due to the interaction
of the metal used and the alcohol. As you were saying,
just for reference, the crown cap was invented by William
Painter in eighteen ninety two and it really revolutionized things
like the beer industry. A lot of carbonated bottled beverages
(18:12):
still used them to this day. Yeah. Yeah, separate episode
that we did. Yep, yep.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
The original material used for screw caps for glass containers
would have been steel. Aluminum came up during the early
nineteen hundreds and then plastics entered the scene like mid century.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
And as the world modernized and consumerism roves, more and
more items on grocery shelves had screw caps, beverages, sauces,
non food things like toothpaste and beauty products. It I
don't know if people didn't write about it or it
just became so ubiquitous, but I feel like it had
a moment where pretty much everybody was like, hey, yeah,
(18:55):
this is to use that. Yep, the screw cap with
the tamperproof hold ring was patented in nineteen eighty one.
And you know what those are, the plastic screw tops
that have the ring at the bottom so you can
tell if it's been opened or not, the little perforated. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
there have been a couple. There had been a couple
(19:17):
of previous tamperproof closures though, but that was when I
think a lot of the big companies started using this,
stepping back a bit and going back to wine. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
So Interestingly, researchers at the University of California Davis were
experimenting with screw cap sealed wine as early as the
nineteen thirties, but it did not take off at that time.
It would not be until the French designed and approved
of the aforementioned stell cap system in the nineteen sixties
(19:52):
that anyone really picked it up.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Yes, so, as discustener win Stopper episode, some folks in
the industry were displeased, to say the least, with this
perceived replacement of the cork with the screwcap. The ritual
of the cork, the feel of the cork, the whole thing.
The screwtop when it came to wine, at least, was
(20:17):
associated with cheap wines. At first, the backlash was severe
enough in the early days that the screwtop almost went
away completely. But Australian wine producers who were looking for
this solution, who were looking for an alternative to the corkstopper,
they were determined and in nineteen seventy Australian Consolidated Industries
(20:38):
bought the rights to the stellcap then screwtop and renamed
it Stelvin. They officially registered that name in nineteen seventy six.
This was when Australian wine producers were really looking to
make a name for themselves on the global stage, which
meant they really had to tackle this cork tank problem
head on. Screwtops were a good way to prevent it.
(21:00):
Australian Consolidated Industries experimented with several different makeups up the
screw top of the material, specifically looking to get the
desired exchange of gas while avoiding cork taint. But now
they had another problem, the public's perception of screw top
wine as a cheap wine that was of poor quality.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Part of this was due to the fact that at
the time screw caps were too good at preventing oxygen
flow into wine bottles, so the only wines that could
be reasonably sealed using screw caps were ones meant to
be consumed young and fresh, which are generally cheaper and
considered less fancy than wines that improve with age. But
(21:46):
cat producers were working on it. I had trouble tracking
down exact dates, but like by the mid nineteen nineties
to early two thousands, they were figuring out materials and
physical bottling processes to all allow wines to breathe a
little bit under screw caps. However, the stigma remained.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Indeed it did, so the wine makers took steps to
counter this narrative. In two thousand, a good chunk of
wineries out of Australia came together to bottle some screw
top wines, about two hundred and fifty thousand bottles of
their best wines to let them age. Six years later,
in two thousand and six, the wine had aged as desired,
(22:28):
the product was good. New Zealand did a similar thing,
beginning in two thousand and one with their screwcap initiative
and their screw cap sypnosium, which I love yeah personally, yeah, yes.
And over time these efforts did come to fruition screw
caps for wine. They're convenient, and the association with cheap
(22:49):
wine isn't as strong today as it was then. As
mentioned in our Wine Stopper episode, wine expert Randall Graham
held a jokey funeral for the cork in two thousand
and two, embracing the screw top for wine.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah, and however you personally feel about screw caps today
for wine, I understand that this really was like an
emotional topic for wine enthusiasts at the time. Just for example,
one Ben Giliberti, writing for the Washington Post in two
thousand and four, In this article, he was trying to
(23:24):
talk readers through why screw caps are really just fine,
and went through this whole scenario about like being in
a restaurant and the horror of a bottle of wine
that you order coming with a screw cap one line
one line from it. It should also be said that
the screw top on the New Zealand Merlow in my
(23:46):
scenario is only distantly related to the crude shard of
aluminum that adorns the top of some soda bottles. Modern
wine screw caps are highly engineered pieces of packaging technology
developed over many years to do the job that corks
seem to do only imperfectly. Oh, very very dramatic.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
It is very very dramatic. A lot of people have
written dramatically about it. However, that, however that may be,
there are still questions. However, as much acceptance as the
screwed cap has gotten with wine, still questions. The test
(24:32):
Australian wine makers conducted were only over a few years,
so how would they go further into the aging process?
Wine makers are continuing to experiment with different materials.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah, but these days experts say that screw caps are
actually more dependable and predictable at oxygen transfer than natural quirk. Yeah,
I know there are strong opinions about this on both
(25:04):
sides of the debate. One of the issues that they
had to work out has actually been the production of
wine bottles, not just the caps. Like, if the neck
and lip of a wine bottle are uneven, that's okay
for a cork, because the cork will shape itself to whatever.
But if you're applying a screw cap, like you've got
(25:25):
a little bit of wiggle room, but it really helps
if the neck is just about perfectly round to fit
the circumference of the cap and if the lip is
even all the way around, not like lumpy or bumpy
in some spaces.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yes, so innovation continues, a lot of it, and not
just when it comes to wine. That has just been
a very big topic when it comes to screw top closures,
and sometimes these innovations are not in favor of the
screw cap either. As new closures are invented or affected.
(26:01):
It can really depend on the product or the intended consumer.
So catch Up, for instance, used to be sold primarily
in screw top bottles, but now a lot of big
companies have pivoted to a squeezable valve system with a
snapld Sports bottles have experimented with hybrid screwtop closures with
(26:22):
a hinged flapper cover, and on top of that, as
more and more people are worried about the environment, along
with some legislation around single use plastic. In the case
of plastic screwtops, there's been an innovation around tethered closures,
so the cap is likelier to remain with the bottle.
Most of these, from what I've seen, are not screw
(26:44):
caps though, but in either case it will certainly have
an impact on the screwtop's future.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
It's so fascinating just to read about something that a
lot of us I think take for granted.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
And don't oh sure you thought about absolutely, absolutely right,
but until you really start thinking about it and then
you're like, oh, oh wait, what's what? Yeah, yeah yeah.
And I personally like, like the way that we interact
with different objects is very fascinating to me because like,
(27:24):
as a human person moving through your environment, there are
a lot of objects that you're just used to that
you just handle without really thinking about unless you have
some kind of physical difference that makes you have to
think about it on a continual basis. And so you know,
like the way the natural motion for most people of
(27:47):
snapping open uh a pop top soda can or unscrewing
a pill bottle or you know, they're just all of
these objects that we have such a familiarity with and
it affects how we move through our every day and
I and it's just so interesting to me that like
(28:08):
thirty fifty one hundred years ago, that set of objects
was totally different, and therefore, like just the daily flow
of motion, a physical motion that a person had would
have been totally different.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
I agree, it's a I think it's worth listeners taking
your time to do what Lauren did and go through
your place and just think about how you interact with
these these items in this type of closure every day.
Or maybe we're just nerds. I don't know, but I
(28:47):
would recommend it.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
This is a thing that always sticks out at me
when I'm watching like historical dramas, because right, like, I like,
sometimes you look at an actor in your like, oh, man,
like they're just doing a bang up job of interacting
with their environment, and sometimes I'm like, I'm not positive
that this person was given the opportunity to learn how
(29:11):
to handle this object. Yeah, in a convincing manner.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
That's true. That's a good trope of time travel, of
realizing you don't know how to interact with these objects.
Not that I will, oh yeah, time travel.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Anyway, ostensibly a food show.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Ostensibly a food show. I think that's what we have
to say about screw top closures for now.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yes, we would love to hear from you, though, if
there are objects that you remember that don't work the
same way as they as they used to, and if
you miss those or if you're so happy about the improvements,
we would love to. I'd love to hear about that.
But in the meanwhile, we do already have some listener
mail for you, and we are going to get into
(30:06):
that as soon as we get back from one more
quick break for a word from our sponsors, and we're back.
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
With I think that was a good one. I liked
that one. Screw up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you get it,
you get it.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
So.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
A fan who would like to remain anonymous, wrote, not
sure if anyone else has suggested it, but as I
come from Italian immigrant parents and the Italian festival in
our area is a huge deal at the end of
every summer, I wanted to recommend a shot or two
of ourto on your lemon ice slash grenita as a
(31:03):
summer treat the end. Oh yes, at the end, at
the summer festival at the Italian Cathedral inner Town, you
could always purchase a lemon ice or a slightly upcharged
lemon ice with never said with what, because they didn't
have a liquor license. Even as a child, you could
(31:25):
order an Italian the pissani. Hope I didn't butcher that
would give you soft, sweet lemon ice World with a
little amaretto at the end of the festival. It is
maybe slightly shady, but it was so delicious and was
one of my fondest childhood memories of the fair. The
festival is a lot stricter now and the area is
(31:47):
struggling with food insecurity and other issues, but an amaretto,
lemon ice and zippole can still be enjoyed if you
know where to look. I highly recommend it.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
That's fun is and I think that just a little
bit of a cordial for a kid. It's all right,
it's it's fine.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Yeah, that's not a little a dash.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Yeah that's not my medical recommendation obviously, but you know, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
But that does sound lovely. Oh it does. Amaretto in
the summer out of their Yes, I love this too.
That is up charged lemon ice with just with Yes.
I love that.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Oh man, that's it's like way too cold for me
to want this right now, but I'm having such a
craving for it to be summer and to do this.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yes, me too.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Bart wrote, When you read out my recent mail about
Moca pods, you mentioned breaking French presses. Oh my, do
I feel your pain, big, very thing, glass vessels, What
could possibly go wrong? I swore never to use a
glass one again when my last one shattered while drying it,
resulting in a ring of glass with sharp edges around
(33:11):
my forearm. But I found the solution. There are stainless
steel French presses. They generally offer a little insulation as
a bonus extra, and they work just as well as
glass presses while being virtually bulletproof. I've had mine for
so many years that my new problem was finding a
replacement filter mesh because I wore that out. It turns
(33:32):
out they are pretty standard in size and easy to replace.
Here is my well worn pair, one for coffee for one,
the other for coffee for three or four. And yes,
attached is a photo of coffee. So many nice coffee accoutrement,
you know, like pieces are just so pretty. These are
(33:54):
just these big beautiful steel cylinders with like a very modernist,
brutalist kind of handle coming off of it, and oh man,
just a just a nice object.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
It is again kind of like the screw cap. You know.
Takes some time to admire the French press in your life,
or the local part in your lives. They look cool.
A lot of innovation went into it. But I this
is good to know because I told my story of
(34:28):
the French press exploding on me and it was a
glass French press, So now I know other options. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Yeah, and safety is always at the top of our
top of our list. We are both slightly clumsy, accident
prone human people.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
So good good safety tip. Yes, always appreciated. Always appreciated
are your messages listeners. Thanks to both of these listeners
for writing in. If you would like to write to us,
you can Our email is hello at savorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
We are also on social media. You can find us
on Instagram and blue Sky at saver pod, and we
do hope to hear from you. Save is production of
iHeartRadio four more podcasts from my Heart Radio. You can
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super
producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
(35:31):
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of iHeartRadio. I'm any
Reason and.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm Lauren vogl Bam, and today we have an episode
for you about screw caps, screw tops, screw top enclosures
for containers.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yes, I then go buy many names. Sure. Sure, we're
continuing our look into closures of different types. Yeah. Yes, which,
by the way, every time we do one of these,
at the end, I have more questions than I generally
came in with, and I want to investigate more. So
(00:43):
I think it's a fun mini series. Yeah. Absolutely. Was
there any particular reason this was on your mind, Laura.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
It's been on my mind ever since the last for
this entire ever since we started looking into closures. I
was like, ooh, this involves materials, science and mechanics. That's
cool on a food show. Let's go into that some more. Yes,
(01:12):
and indeed it does.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
And I think this gives you a real if you
needed it, I'll look into how nerdy we are. Yeah
that we were excited to look into this. However, we
did come we ran into some trouble researching this one.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Surprisingly, Yeah, right, there were just you know, this is
a very podcaster problem to have, but there aren't enough
industry websites like of businesses like production companies that have
extensive archival material about their company history readily available to us.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Ridiculous is what it is, absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
And or Google is breaking under our feet every day.
So I don't know, I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
It could be both.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, both are both are issues, I strongly believe. But yes,
but we persevered. Uh and I and I believe we
have an episode for you, Yes, we absolutely do.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Uh. And it is highly related to our past episode
enclosures wine stoppers.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, cork crown caps ramine is a great one for
cod cod bottle closures.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Yeah, uh huh. You can also see our Sparkling Wine episodes,
which were our very first so you know it was
some great a.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Little claimer there. We were new, we were fresh out
the bucks.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
We we definitely were. But I guess that brings us
to our question. Sure, screw caps what are they? Well?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Screw caps are a type of closure for containers that involve,
at the user end physically spinning a cap designed with
a spiral thread on its interior off of a container
with a matching spiral thread on its lips exterior The
(03:28):
idea is that this has snugly and securely fit the
cap onto the container, and you can easily remove it
and then put it back on again if you so choose,
and in this way you can contain anything larger than
the spaces remaining between the cap and the container. The
fit can be made tighter, even liquid or air tight,
(03:50):
by placing some kind of layer of soft material on
the inside of the cap, either on the thread or
at the top, that will form to the lip of
the container. All kinds of containers, for all kinds of
purposes are designed this way because it's a simple and
effective mechanical design that isn't very expensive to manufacture, and
it allows the user to yes easily open and close
(04:13):
the container over and over again with no special equipment
other than a decent ability to grip and twist depending
on the materials and process you use to seal the container.
This means that you can package just about any solid
or liquid. But since we are extensibly a food show,
let's say anything from like powdered herbs to whole spices,
(04:36):
to prepared soups and sauces, to fruit or vegetables or
meat packed in liquid, to beverages from milk to soda
to yes wine. Products from industrial manufacturers or that are
meant for long term storage will usually have some kind
of safety feature built into this cap to assure you
that the contents have arrived to you, like sanitarily sealed.
(05:00):
Screw caps are one of those inventions that, like you
don't necessarily think about, but are absolutely everywhere, to the
extent that when you do think about them, you are
you're forced to conclude that like sometimes, just sometimes humans
really figure a thing out.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah, it really is everywhere. Doing this research, I started
to think of all of the products I have that
use a screw top.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Yeah, I lot. Yeah. I spent a decent amount of
time wandering around my house looking at containers. While I
was writing this outline. I was like, no, really, how
does it work? Oh?
Speaker 1 (05:42):
I see, okay, cool, totally normal thing to do.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
It was the first time I've ever had to be like, Bruce,
don't try to drink the contro.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
See, yeah, Bruce, the kitten does not many contrue what
I will say.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Although if she was drunk this whole time, it would
kind of explain a lot.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Anyway, Okay, so the materials that are used to make
a screw cap container depend a lot on the properties
of the product meant to be stored, perhaps obviously, but
I'm going to say a lot of obvious things in
this episode, but I think that they bear saying, so
you know, really you can make a screw cap, jar
or bottle out of anything. It does help if the
(06:31):
container is made out of something more rigid and the
cap is made out of something more malleable, And again,
you do get a lot better of a seal if
there's a bit inside the cap that's extra malleable and
will like form to the rigid container lip each time
you screw the cap on. But beyond that, like you know,
the container can be glass or metal, or plastic or ceramic.
(06:52):
The lid is most often metal or plastic, but can
be glass or ceramic too. The cap liner can be cork, rubber,
some kind of soft plastic, or paper coated with metal
or plastic or both to make it less permeable but
also less expensive than straight plastic. The things you're looking
to watch out for in the design here are well
(07:14):
like a the content's escaping. That's not the most effective
way to package something. B the contents reacting with the
container materials and see the contents staying fresh both while
sealed in the package and in some capacity after the
package has been opened by the user for the first time.
So you're necessarily looking at different materials and designs for
(07:36):
something to contain something thick like processed peanut butter versus
thin like olive oil, versus acidic like vinegar versus meant
to be used fresh within a short period of time
like orange juice. Yeah, we would need to be a
whole different show in order to cover how these materials
(08:00):
work and like how the different types of containers are
developed and produced. Like damn it, gym, I'm a food
podcast or not a material science expert. But very basically,
plastic is such a useful material for screw caps and
the containers that they go on because it can be
(08:21):
melted and injected into a mold, and the mold can
be pretty detailed, and the plastic will cool and harden
into that shape and probably only need like minor finishing
like trimming to get the rough edges off when it
comes out of the mold. Plastic is unfortunately extremely convenient
and inexpensive to work with aluminum screw caps that go
(08:44):
onto glass bottles like wine or soda bottles work a
little bit differently. Basically, you mold the glass bottle to
have a thread at the outer rim, and then you
press an aluminum cap onto the thread that it takes
the exact form of that threaded neck. But because aluminium
(09:06):
alone wouldn't seal super well and could corrode from contact
with liquids, you line the aluminum with what's called in
the industry wad real sexy. This is modernly some kind
of soft plastic, often several layers of slightly different soft plastics,
and sometimes a little bit of paper and metal like
tin or more aluminum in there. There will be a
(09:27):
thick disc of this stuff in the top of the
cap and a little bit along the inner sides. So
when you press the cap onto the bottleneck, the wad
forms the secure seal with the lip and the sides
of the neck, and the firmer aluminum on the outside
holds it in place and in shape. It's really very clever,
(09:48):
and the design can incorporate all kinds of little features
that just help secure the cap and make it more
or less resealable. These days, there are all kinds of
material science innovations being made for different needs. You know,
like I saw some plant fiber packaging that can be
(10:08):
used in place of plastic in some applications to reduce
dependence on plastics. Containers made with more recycled material and
or from materials that are more recyclable. There is, in
particular a lot of work going into producing multi layer
caps with very precise levels of air permeability for the
(10:32):
wine industry. As we discussed in our corek episode, wines
generally want a small amount of airflow in and out
of a sealed bottle so that the wine develops a
bit while it's in there. More on that in the
history section.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yes, yes, indeed. Well what about the nutrition?
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Uh, do not eat product containers unless you find yourself
in some kind of like Willy Wonka situation.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Good advice, I think, yeah, good advice. Yeah, all right,
Well we do have some numbers for you.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah. So, just out of curiosity, while I was wandering
around my home looking at containers, I did account to
see how many products I use on like a weekly
basis that have a screw cap enclosure, and it's like
fifteen to twenty on the daily. It's more like five
to ten and more cosmetics than foods, mostly because I'm
(11:27):
not cooking from scratch every day, but like, yeah, when
I do cook, like so many of my seasonings, both
both liquid and solid, come in screw cap containers.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yep, agreed.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Yeah, the beverage industry is the largest share of the
very large market for screw caps, with pharma and cosmetics
trailing behind. And when you look at wine closures specifically,
as of twenty sixteen, in the International Wine Challenge, which
(12:01):
is this big industry wine rating an award body, twenty
six percent of wines from around the world that were
entered we're sealed with screw caps. A little bit of
a quarter, not too shabby. In contrast, though, of the
entries from Australia, eighty nine percent were screw caps.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yep. That sounds about right, m h. And even though
the screw cap is so ubiquitous, people do love writing
about that wine part. So we are going to talk
about that in the history.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, pretty extensively. And we are going to get into
that history as soon as we get back from a
quick break for a word from our sponsors, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you, so yes, we are
going to be talking a lot about wine in this episode,
because that's what everybody seems to be writing about when
it comes to screwtop caps. For now, I just added
all the words in there.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yeah sure, why not?
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Yeah? Yeah sure. So if you haven't listened to the
episode we did on cork, but we did touch on
other wine stoppers, definitely go do that. A lot of
what we're going to talk about does have to do
with wine. But yeah, screwtops have been around and used
for all kinds of things. It's sort of frustrating that
(13:32):
no one is writing about them that we could find.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yeah, because I'm like, this has been around since the
eighteen fifties, so yes, you'd think.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
You said it's used for all kinds of things. All right.
Since food, drink, and in this case particularly alcohol, storage
has been a thing, the question of how to best
store these items has been one that's caused a lot
of innovation. And yeah, if you've listened to our very
first episode on sparkling wine, you know that the pressures
(14:02):
built by fermentation led to explosions of bottles and legitimate
concern at the time when they didn't understand what was happening.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
They were like, is the devil in the cellar right
now exactly, And yeah, throughout history, containers for foods and
drinks were made out of something hard like glass or ceramic,
and were sealed by things like cork or wax or
combination of both. Sometimes other stuff found its way in
there as well, but those were like the main main
ways to seal up a container. However, these containers could
(14:34):
not be pressure sealed, so fresh products couldn't be made
shelf stable through canning. If you wanted to preserve something
that wasn't already relatively self preserving, like vinegar or honey,
your choices were basically to dry it out with heat
or by packing it in salt or sugar, or to
pickle it. And this is how a lot of the
(14:56):
traditional foods that we enjoy today were developed. But none
of these preserves methods were perfect.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Right, And another issue in this conversation when it comes
to wine, particularly as discussed in our wine Stoppers episode,
is cork taint. In simplest terms, this is when cork,
the traditional wine stopper, is tainted with TCA, which gives
it an unpleasant taste and smell. It's really bad. I've
experienced it before. The impact of that was enough that
(15:24):
wine producers, specifically, we're looking for a new solution to this,
to cork, to this stopper. And yes, this is why
you might get asked to smell a cork at a
restaurant if you order a bottle of wine. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
The answer, the correct answer in that situation is not
do I like this wine? It is does it smell
like a wet dish rag?
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Yep, exactly. Meanwhile, there was the issue of shipping wines
from places like Australia, wherein the length of the export
time allowed for more chance of cork taint during the transport,
so Australian wine producers were looking for options outside of cork. Simultaneously,
(16:07):
French bottle manufacturer Le Bouchon Mecanique was working on a solution.
They had been approached by Australian wineries and in nineteen
fifty nine they came up with the screw cap for wine.
They called it the Stelle cap. Then the caps were
repurposed from the bottles of other spirits. So this was
(16:29):
a big deal. And while this is the most recent
and perhaps most notable iteration of the screw cap, because
wine producers typically didn't use this type of closure. Screw
caps were already in use for things like beer and
some food items and had been for a long time.
In fact, a lot of folks trace the beginning of
the screw cap to the invention or at least the
(16:51):
patenting of the Mason jar with a screw cap in
eighteen fifty eight by John Landis Mason. He came up
with a design for a square shaped jar with a
threaded neck and lid and a rubber seal so that
it could be airtight. This innovation greatly improved the preservation
of food at the time, and it allowed people with
(17:11):
access to them greater food safety and convenience, and a
way to preserve their own foods or beverages at home.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, this was a time of a lot of innovations
in the bottling and canning space thanks to a number
of things, but like a lot of them had to
do with the Industrial Revolution ramping up manufacturing and also
a number of like materials technologies being improved. For example,
the cod neck bottle was patented in eighteen seventy two.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Right, and when it comes to beverages specifically, a fellow
named Dan Reinolds out of the UK patented a screwtop
for whiskey.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
In like the eighteen nineties. I want to say, yeah, yes.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yes, but it never really got any traction, in part
because it had some functional issues due to the interaction
of the metal used and the alcohol. As you were saying,
just for reference, the crown cap was invented by William
Painter in eighteen ninety two and it really revolutionized things
like the beer industry. A lot of carbonated bottled beverages
(18:12):
still used them to this day. Yeah. Yeah, separate episode
that we did. Yep, yep.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
The original material used for screw caps for glass containers
would have been steel. Aluminum came up during the early
nineteen hundreds and then plastics entered the scene like mid century.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
And as the world modernized and consumerism roves, more and
more items on grocery shelves had screw caps, beverages, sauces,
non food things like toothpaste and beauty products. It I
don't know if people didn't write about it or it
just became so ubiquitous, but I feel like it had
a moment where pretty much everybody was like, hey, yeah,
(18:55):
this is to use that. Yep, the screw cap with
the tamperproof hold ring was patented in nineteen eighty one.
And you know what those are, the plastic screw tops
that have the ring at the bottom so you can
tell if it's been opened or not, the little perforated. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
there have been a couple. There had been a couple
(19:17):
of previous tamperproof closures though, but that was when I
think a lot of the big companies started using this,
stepping back a bit and going back to wine. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
So Interestingly, researchers at the University of California Davis were
experimenting with screw cap sealed wine as early as the
nineteen thirties, but it did not take off at that time.
It would not be until the French designed and approved
of the aforementioned stell cap system in the nineteen sixties
(19:52):
that anyone really picked it up.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Yes, so, as discustener win Stopper episode, some folks in
the industry were displeased, to say the least, with this
perceived replacement of the cork with the screwcap. The ritual
of the cork, the feel of the cork, the whole thing.
The screwtop when it came to wine, at least, was
(20:17):
associated with cheap wines. At first, the backlash was severe
enough in the early days that the screwtop almost went
away completely. But Australian wine producers who were looking for
this solution, who were looking for an alternative to the corkstopper,
they were determined and in nineteen seventy Australian Consolidated Industries
(20:38):
bought the rights to the stellcap then screwtop and renamed
it Stelvin. They officially registered that name in nineteen seventy six.
This was when Australian wine producers were really looking to
make a name for themselves on the global stage, which
meant they really had to tackle this cork tank problem
head on. Screwtops were a good way to prevent it.
(21:00):
Australian Consolidated Industries experimented with several different makeups up the
screw top of the material, specifically looking to get the
desired exchange of gas while avoiding cork taint. But now
they had another problem, the public's perception of screw top
wine as a cheap wine that was of poor quality.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Part of this was due to the fact that at
the time screw caps were too good at preventing oxygen
flow into wine bottles, so the only wines that could
be reasonably sealed using screw caps were ones meant to
be consumed young and fresh, which are generally cheaper and
considered less fancy than wines that improve with age. But
(21:46):
cat producers were working on it. I had trouble tracking
down exact dates, but like by the mid nineteen nineties
to early two thousands, they were figuring out materials and
physical bottling processes to all allow wines to breathe a
little bit under screw caps. However, the stigma remained.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Indeed it did, so the wine makers took steps to
counter this narrative. In two thousand, a good chunk of
wineries out of Australia came together to bottle some screw
top wines, about two hundred and fifty thousand bottles of
their best wines to let them age. Six years later,
in two thousand and six, the wine had aged as desired,
(22:28):
the product was good. New Zealand did a similar thing,
beginning in two thousand and one with their screwcap initiative
and their screw cap sypnosium, which I love yeah personally, yeah, yes.
And over time these efforts did come to fruition screw
caps for wine. They're convenient, and the association with cheap
(22:49):
wine isn't as strong today as it was then. As
mentioned in our Wine Stopper episode, wine expert Randall Graham
held a jokey funeral for the cork in two thousand
and two, embracing the screw top for wine.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah, and however you personally feel about screw caps today
for wine, I understand that this really was like an
emotional topic for wine enthusiasts at the time. Just for example,
one Ben Giliberti, writing for the Washington Post in two
thousand and four, In this article, he was trying to
(23:24):
talk readers through why screw caps are really just fine,
and went through this whole scenario about like being in
a restaurant and the horror of a bottle of wine
that you order coming with a screw cap one line
one line from it. It should also be said that
the screw top on the New Zealand Merlow in my
(23:46):
scenario is only distantly related to the crude shard of
aluminum that adorns the top of some soda bottles. Modern
wine screw caps are highly engineered pieces of packaging technology
developed over many years to do the job that corks
seem to do only imperfectly. Oh, very very dramatic.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
It is very very dramatic. A lot of people have
written dramatically about it. However, that, however that may be,
there are still questions. However, as much acceptance as the
screwed cap has gotten with wine, still questions. The test
(24:32):
Australian wine makers conducted were only over a few years,
so how would they go further into the aging process?
Wine makers are continuing to experiment with different materials.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah, but these days experts say that screw caps are
actually more dependable and predictable at oxygen transfer than natural quirk. Yeah,
I know there are strong opinions about this on both
(25:04):
sides of the debate. One of the issues that they
had to work out has actually been the production of
wine bottles, not just the caps. Like, if the neck
and lip of a wine bottle are uneven, that's okay
for a cork, because the cork will shape itself to whatever.
But if you're applying a screw cap, like you've got
(25:25):
a little bit of wiggle room, but it really helps
if the neck is just about perfectly round to fit
the circumference of the cap and if the lip is
even all the way around, not like lumpy or bumpy
in some spaces.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yes, so innovation continues, a lot of it, and not
just when it comes to wine. That has just been
a very big topic when it comes to screw top closures,
and sometimes these innovations are not in favor of the
screw cap either. As new closures are invented or affected.
(26:01):
It can really depend on the product or the intended consumer.
So catch Up, for instance, used to be sold primarily
in screw top bottles, but now a lot of big
companies have pivoted to a squeezable valve system with a
snapld Sports bottles have experimented with hybrid screwtop closures with
(26:22):
a hinged flapper cover, and on top of that, as
more and more people are worried about the environment, along
with some legislation around single use plastic. In the case
of plastic screwtops, there's been an innovation around tethered closures,
so the cap is likelier to remain with the bottle.
Most of these, from what I've seen, are not screw
(26:44):
caps though, but in either case it will certainly have
an impact on the screwtop's future.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
It's so fascinating just to read about something that a
lot of us I think take for granted.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
And don't oh sure you thought about absolutely, absolutely right,
but until you really start thinking about it and then
you're like, oh, oh wait, what's what? Yeah, yeah yeah.
And I personally like, like the way that we interact
with different objects is very fascinating to me because like,
(27:24):
as a human person moving through your environment, there are
a lot of objects that you're just used to that
you just handle without really thinking about unless you have
some kind of physical difference that makes you have to
think about it on a continual basis. And so you know,
like the way the natural motion for most people of
(27:47):
snapping open uh a pop top soda can or unscrewing
a pill bottle or you know, they're just all of
these objects that we have such a familiarity with and
it affects how we move through our every day and
I and it's just so interesting to me that like
(28:08):
thirty fifty one hundred years ago, that set of objects
was totally different, and therefore, like just the daily flow
of motion, a physical motion that a person had would
have been totally different.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
I agree, it's a I think it's worth listeners taking
your time to do what Lauren did and go through
your place and just think about how you interact with
these these items in this type of closure every day.
Or maybe we're just nerds. I don't know, but I
(28:47):
would recommend it.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
This is a thing that always sticks out at me
when I'm watching like historical dramas, because right, like, I like,
sometimes you look at an actor in your like, oh, man,
like they're just doing a bang up job of interacting
with their environment, and sometimes I'm like, I'm not positive
that this person was given the opportunity to learn how
(29:11):
to handle this object. Yeah, in a convincing manner.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
That's true. That's a good trope of time travel, of
realizing you don't know how to interact with these objects.
Not that I will, oh yeah, time travel.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Anyway, ostensibly a food show.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Ostensibly a food show. I think that's what we have
to say about screw top closures for now.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yes, we would love to hear from you, though, if
there are objects that you remember that don't work the
same way as they as they used to, and if
you miss those or if you're so happy about the improvements,
we would love to. I'd love to hear about that.
But in the meanwhile, we do already have some listener
mail for you, and we are going to get into
(30:06):
that as soon as we get back from one more
quick break for a word from our sponsors, and we're back.
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
With I think that was a good one. I liked
that one. Screw up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you get it,
you get it.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
So.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
A fan who would like to remain anonymous, wrote, not
sure if anyone else has suggested it, but as I
come from Italian immigrant parents and the Italian festival in
our area is a huge deal at the end of
every summer, I wanted to recommend a shot or two
of ourto on your lemon ice slash grenita as a
(31:03):
summer treat the end. Oh yes, at the end, at
the summer festival at the Italian Cathedral inner Town, you
could always purchase a lemon ice or a slightly upcharged
lemon ice with never said with what, because they didn't
have a liquor license. Even as a child, you could
(31:25):
order an Italian the pissani. Hope I didn't butcher that
would give you soft, sweet lemon ice World with a
little amaretto at the end of the festival. It is
maybe slightly shady, but it was so delicious and was
one of my fondest childhood memories of the fair. The
festival is a lot stricter now and the area is
(31:47):
struggling with food insecurity and other issues, but an amaretto,
lemon ice and zippole can still be enjoyed if you
know where to look. I highly recommend it.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
That's fun is and I think that just a little
bit of a cordial for a kid. It's all right,
it's it's fine.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Yeah, that's not a little a dash.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Yeah that's not my medical recommendation obviously, but you know, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
But that does sound lovely. Oh it does. Amaretto in
the summer out of their Yes, I love this too.
That is up charged lemon ice with just with Yes.
I love that.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Oh man, that's it's like way too cold for me
to want this right now, but I'm having such a
craving for it to be summer and to do this.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yes, me too.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Bart wrote, When you read out my recent mail about
Moca pods, you mentioned breaking French presses. Oh my, do
I feel your pain, big, very thing, glass vessels, What
could possibly go wrong? I swore never to use a
glass one again when my last one shattered while drying it,
resulting in a ring of glass with sharp edges around
(33:11):
my forearm. But I found the solution. There are stainless
steel French presses. They generally offer a little insulation as
a bonus extra, and they work just as well as
glass presses while being virtually bulletproof. I've had mine for
so many years that my new problem was finding a
replacement filter mesh because I wore that out. It turns
(33:32):
out they are pretty standard in size and easy to replace.
Here is my well worn pair, one for coffee for one,
the other for coffee for three or four. And yes,
attached is a photo of coffee. So many nice coffee accoutrement,
you know, like pieces are just so pretty. These are
(33:54):
just these big beautiful steel cylinders with like a very modernist,
brutalist kind of handle coming off of it, and oh man,
just a just a nice object.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
It is again kind of like the screw cap. You know.
Takes some time to admire the French press in your life,
or the local part in your lives. They look cool.
A lot of innovation went into it. But I this
is good to know because I told my story of
(34:28):
the French press exploding on me and it was a
glass French press, So now I know other options. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Yeah, and safety is always at the top of our
top of our list. We are both slightly clumsy, accident
prone human people.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
So good good safety tip. Yes, always appreciated. Always appreciated
are your messages listeners. Thanks to both of these listeners
for writing in. If you would like to write to us,
you can Our email is hello at savorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
We are also on social media. You can find us
on Instagram and blue Sky at saver pod, and we
do hope to hear from you. Save is production of
iHeartRadio four more podcasts from my Heart Radio. You can
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super
producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
(35:31):
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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