bottle bombs!!!!

hey all:
first time out to make some nice homebrew and i decided on cider to start with. wound up with a very pleasant, very clear sweet yet boozy cider. then i blew it the hell up. heres what i did:

-2x1gal bottles of cheap apple juice from walmart.
-add 1cup white sugar to each gal
-bung and airlock will fit right into the open bottle top
-fermented 2 weeks with red star champ yeast (will switch to nottingham ale yeast next time after my reading here)
-racked into secondary and let sit for 3ish weeks, had a terrible sulfery smell/taste when i took a sample from racking
-after 3ish weeks the sulfer seemed to be gone so i added potassium sorbate from local homebrew shop and let sit another week
-cider cleared into a nice light amber color but was very dry and boozy as hell so i added some apple juice concentrate
-tasted and looked great so i poured into 22oz bottles and secured with crown caps, (no priming sugar) wife wanted still cider.

this stuff was awesome, at lease for a first timer i thought. first clue i missed was that upon opening a bottle with dinner, it was really fizzy, i had to pour it, let it sit for a while before i could come back to finish filling the glass. but like a super newbie i just thought it was cool and gave no thought to what was going on in my precious bottles. two days later- boom!!!! all the rest i had sitting on the kitchen floor beside the fridge went off within a few minutes of each other.

my question: what did i do wrong?
what should i change?( i plan on using real pressed apple juice in the future but wanted to go cheap as im starting out)

i have 5gals made in the same fassion that i need to start thinking about bottling soon.....
any help would be greatly appreciated, m.

ps, i was out of town in toronto when the bottles blew and my wife informed me, thus please dont worry about me i didnt need to clean any of the mess up and have come through this ordeal with a minimum of psychological scarring.

I can't claim to not be a nube, but I've been lurking on here long enough to feel I deserve to take a swing at this one...

Did you take gravity readings at all? Very curious what the Original Gravity & gravity when you cleared & bottled was... if I had to guess, this is one factor: you weren't fermented all the way out.

Aside from that, I'm guess you did more than prime your bottles, you doubled their fermentables by adding that apple juice concentrate... Again, speaking of gravities.. it would have been critical to take one before & after that addition to know how much fermentable content it added.

I'm leaning more toward that apple juice concentrate more than the final gravity reading though.

adding the concentrate aka more sugar and then bottling them did exactly what priming sugar would have done, you added to much sugar thus creating your bottle bombs

-=Jason=-

Thanks guys. Here's the thing though: shouldn't the potassium sorbate have killed off all of the yeast? My initial problem was that when I tried to backsweeten it would take off fermenting again. Because I used that damn campagne yeast with such a high tolerance for abv it just kept on going. The lady at my local homebrew shop sold me this stuff and said it would kill the yeast and then I could sweeten away without worry of renewed ferm. Was she wrong? What's this cold crashing I've been hearing mention of and do I need to do this? Thanks for the replies fellas and no I haven't yet started taking gravity readings but plan to start when I get the basics figured out.

from the wiki on potassium sorbate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_sorbate
"Also known as "wine stabilizer", potassium sorbate produces sorbic acid when added to wine. It serves two purposes. When active fermentation has ceased and the wine is racked for the final time after clearing, potassium sorbate will render any surviving yeast incapable of multiplying. Yeast living at that moment can continue fermenting any residual sugar into CO2 and alcohol, but when they die no new yeast will be present to cause future fermentation. When a wine is sweetened before bottling, potassium sorbate is used to prevent refermentation when used in conjunction with potassium metabisulfite. It is primarily used with sweet wines, sparkling wines, and some hard ciders but may be added to table wines which exhibit difficulty in maintaining clarity after fining"

basically if you still had live yeast when you bottled then they can still produce CO2. Aslo it depends on how much you put in your cider. if you do this again use with potassium metabysulfite and after adding the two let it sit for 2 or so weeks before you add a the concentrate , this will accomplish two things 1 give the yeast time to die off 2 you will get a clearer cider. after you add the concentrate i would let it sit another week to make sure fermentation has not started up again. hope that answers your questions

irishmike said:

Thanks guys. Here's the thing though: shouldn't the potassium sorbate have killed off all of the yeast? My initial problem was that when I tried to backsweeten it would take off fermenting again. Because I used that damn campagne yeast with such a high tolerance for abv it just kept on going. The lady at my local homebrew shop sold me this stuff and said it would kill the yeast and then I could sweeten away without worry of renewed ferm. Was she wrong? What's this cold crashing I've been hearing mention of and do I need to do this? Thanks for the replies fellas and no I haven't yet started taking gravity readings but plan to start when I get the basics figured out.

Click to expand...

Sorbate doesn't kill yeast. It inhibits yeast reproduction. It works great, but it's generally used after several rackings and after the cider/wine has been long clear and no longer dropping any lees. If you still have tons of yeast in the cider, it won't need to reproduce to restart fermentation and you'll have bottle bombs.

The other thing to note- sorbate works better in the presence of sulfites. So when you try this again, use one campden tablet per gallon along with the sorbate.

Next time, use gravity readings and far more time. It takes a while for the cider to have most of the yeast fall out, but sticking it in the fridge after it's finished can help move it along faster. The only way to know if it's indeed done is through using a hydrometer.

So next time:

1. cold crash your cider 24/48hrs
2. sorbate in your bottling bucket and add the cider.
3. Add sweeteners to taste
4. sulfite at 30PPM (1 camden per gallon) Sulfite after you sweeten since the sulfites will change the flavor of the cider temporarily (once bottled this flavor will go away).
5. Bottle

Unless you have a kegging setup, this method will yield you a sweetened still cider (so don't put priming sugar in there too).

Cold Crashing: chilling your cider to less than say 50F so the live and active suspended yeast go dormant and drop to the bottom of your cider. Then when you rack off your cider into the bottling bucket you leave a majority of the yeast behind.

irishmike said:

I haven't yet started taking gravity readings

Click to expand...

I think you've solved your problem right there. Making cider is a very easy thing to do and people are the ones who complicate it. The key is patience and doing things the right way. You really don't need to add anything except the juice and water (and in this case sugar) then wait for the cider to dry out at a low gravity and then it will be safe for bottling.

you can also pasteurize your finished product. It may be easier than worrying about tablets and if there is any leftover yeasts still alive. You just heat the cider to a certain temp for 10min and you are done. All leftover yeast will be dead.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/easy-stove-top-pasteurizing-pics-193295/

I'm guessing the back-sweetening with additional apple juice. As a chemist I can confirm the other's postings about sorbate. You can overpower "sorbate preserved" juices by adding two packets of Red Star per 5 gallons and still get a good ferment if you only have access to sorbated juice. Used this technique to make a hard sassafras cider using commercial sassafras tea extract.

When my cider is too dry, I back-sweeten with Splenda (pricey) or lactose (much cheaper but you have to worry about lactose-intolerant drinkers) that yeast won't process. Only time that I had bottle bombs was when I primed in the bottle instead of by the batch and didn't use this calculator:

http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html