If they tell you they can take more pressure than that, and you lose an eye, they could be up for a lawsuit. So I'm not suprised at all that they don't recommend higher levels. They even alluded to this in their response referencin insurance.
Even if they did testing on the bottles straight out of the factory, they can't guarantee the same strength on the bottles once they no longer control them
@terminal2k I understand what you're saying but I thin either you've misunderstood me or I've miscommunicated.
My concern with Cooper is this and for the purposes of simplicity lets assume we're speaking about the brand new glass bottles they are selling through LHB stores, which although identical to their own commercially used bottles are sold SPECIFICALLY knowing that home brewers will be using them.
1. Why do they have zero information with these bottles regarding their maximum recommended pressure? As in lieu of this home brewers have to do - exactly what I did, GUESS.
As mentioned this is standard on just about any product you buy where in it's normal use going beyond certain limits could bring danger or problems for the consumer. e.g temperature guidelines on bakeware, weight ratings on car jacks/stands, chairs etc.
It could be simply stating these bottles have a recommended maximum priming pressure of 3.0vol CO2 at 20oC. So why do they not do that? Thats bodgy and causes problems like THIS thread as it seems the entire AHB community, and they don't come a lot more knowledgeable than
@MHB -
felt they'd surely be fine for well above this - saying based on his expertise that 5vol at 40c would be fine.
And yet Coopers when forced (and they were forced, it was hardly easy info to get) stated 40% less! Massive difference.
The conditon of the bottles is really not relevant for the recommended pressure rating - again ALL products have the factor of wear/normal usage - on them and manage to rate. They could easily just say scratched/damaged bottles should be discarded - but again they say nothing.
2. I don't want them to tell me more or less pressure - I just want to know WHAT the recommended pressure is. If I or any consumer chooses to go above this - that'll be our issue and I'm pretty sure they'd have zero liability IF they told us BELOW what we went with was fine.
For at present they're actually very liable for any injury that misuse of their bottles may cause - as consumers have no way of knowing whats safe - and have to guess. Thats the very definition of public liability - something easy they could have done that due to it's absence caused injury &/or damages to consumers.
3. As to what the actual maximum pressure is - obviously they know - it's a bottle, and would vary but same with all products but they know that testing as shown that at 4vol 40c 95% of bottles burst. SO this is the maximum pressure rating, but they don't put this out to the public and instead they give a safer lower figure as the maximum RECOMMENDED pressure.
Saying things like 'read between the lines' on a company email and in lieu of providing proper info is unacceptable and pretty ******* amateurish.
And to top it off in this thread alone 2 people have now contacted Coopers and been told 2 different recommended max's 3.2 and 3.0 vol. So they can't even be consistant on that.
Am I being narky? Maybe but again this is not rocket science, you're selling a product for a set purpose - tell people how to properly use it, so they don't have to guess.
