Fixing bottle Bombs

I brewed a Milk Stout for a friend, after it was bottled he took the beers to his house. This morning he called to tell me one had exploded. I am planning on going over later and opening the bottles to relieve the excess pressure adding a small amount of potassium sorbate and re capping. has anyone done something similar with bottle bombs or have a better remedy?

did he add priming sugar to the bottle directly or to the whole batch? How much did he add? It could have been a bottle with an imperfection in it and just busted and not "explode". Make sure of all that before you go opening all of them. It may be an isolated mishap and he has a good batch. Usually when it's way overcarbed, there isn't a lot you can do to fix it. It will all just foam out when you open the cap (careful it pops off like a rocket). A lot of guys just open the tops and then recap them. But, if bottles are exploding, it's hard to save. Sometimes weird **** just happens.

You can either open them up to relieve pressure or just stick them all in the fridge. I don't think that the potassium sorbate is necessary.

What was your FG, and what was the recipe? Did you just add too much priming sugar, or was fermentation not finished? If fermentation isn't finished, then I think that your only option would be to stash them in the fridge.

Out of the hundreds and hundreds of bottles I have filled, I have had only 2 that "broke", and never any bottle bombs. You would have to prime to at least 4+ volumes before standard beer bottles start exploding. My guess, if it was just one bottle is the the bottle was weak or defective prior to filling, and the capping process weakened it further.

I don't like the idea of potassium sorbate. First, it has a distinctive taste. Secondly, it doesn't stop fermentation anyway. It does work to inhibit yeast reproduction, but it doesn't sound like that is the issue.