Exploding bottles

While helping my brother in law move yesterday, I got the dreadful call from my extremely annoyed wife. My bottles of home brew were exploding in the room upstairs where I placed them. Beer all over the carpet, glass everywhere. It was my first batch, a Belgian Tripel. The beer tasted good, a little bit excessive as far as fizziness. I know for sure that I bottled a bit prematurely, my FG should have been 1point lower, my fault for bad record keeping, but the beer had been in bottles for almost five weeks already. So I'm wondering if I should have moved them to a cooler place a little sooner. They were sitting near a window, in boxes, but the sun was beaming through. I've moved what's left to the garage in the hopes that the lower temp will decrease the pressure and halt anymore possible fermentation, preventing the survivors from succumbing to the same fate. Any opinions/similar experiences?

what/how much did you prime with?

Did you take final gravity reading at least 2 separate times. a day or more apart to verify that the beer was done fermenting before you bottled? You said you bottled prematurely.......there's the root cause.

Safety glasses recommended.
Rubbermaid bin recommended.

Won't stop bombs but will contain damage.

I primed with corn sugar solution. 3/4 cup in two cups water. I only took one FG and it was actually after I bottled. I now understand that was reckless and irresponsible but I learned from it. In truth I was in a rush to bottle because I work a rotational schedule away from home and if I didn't get it done, it would have had to sit in the fermenter for another 3 weeks. Don't know now if that would have been good or bad.

With very few exceptions, an extra 3 weeks in the fermenter will never be a "bad" thing. BTW, an FG reading "after I bottled" is useless because you have just added sugar (raised the gravity) when you primed.

True, and I used some of the beer that was left in the fermenting carboy that the racking cane couldn't pick up, so it hadn't been primed yet. I only mentioned that because it was hopeless to do anything about it after everything else
had been bottled.

Belgians can take some time to get the last few points. You need to be sure that they are done before bottling. You cannot rush them.

Jmorrison361 said:

I know for sure that I bottled a bit prematurely, my FG should have been 1point lower,

Click to expand...

one point like 1.008 or 1.009? that would not have made a difference.
10 points might have - like 1.028 instead of 1.018....

Time is your friend - 4 weeks in your fermenter, let the yeast do it's thing COMPLETELY...
Some commercial beers spend much less time in the fermenter, but they filter out ALL the yeast and pump in some CO2 - so there's no further yeast to perform any activities.

By the way - WELCOME to HBT!!

Ok, I think I may have over primed. According to the scale in my copy of "How To Brew" a Belgian ale should need about 2oz. And my solution was the equivalent of 4 oz.

To make sure swmbo does not want to cut your nutz off for making a mess wallmart by me at least sells nice plastic storage containers for around 5bucks. When I bottle I keep them in the covered container for a few weeks just in case the go boom it's a easy clean up and swmbo does not get pissy

If it makes you feel any better Jmorrison I will be learning from your mistakes. I think I will go invest in a small plastic tub to protect against beer bombs this weekend.

Bottle bombs are VERY dangerous. Seriously. Glass can fly 20 to 30 feet.

Your first beer was a triple? Wow. Ballsy.

And now you see what happens. Lol. Priming sugar should be by the oz. I can not see how even 4oz would cause the bombs though. I bet it was not done fermenting. Big big beer for the first try.

Yeah, the folks at Arctic Brewing Supply
Warned me that it was a tricky beer and not recommended for newbies, but I had to chance it. I only lost seven (so far) and the beer is actually pretty good so it's not a total loss. I will definitely be investing in some containment before next time.