Bottle bombs

Silly newbie question

Do the bottles actually explode. glass shards everywhere. People running for their lives

Or is it a fountain of beer blowing the caps off and going all over the place.

My youtube search yeilded the later

Just wondering how scared I need to be of these things. You know riot shield vs raincoat

I have heard both. It's going to take the route of least resistance, whether that is blowing the cap off or breaking the glass.

Exploding glass bottles are definitely possible. I had to pick up glass fragments from 10 feet away after a fairly loud explosion. Great education on the need of stabilizer when back-sweetening cider.

I have only had one, but it looked pretty bad. I had four six packs of 12 ounces bottles conditioning inside of a box to keep things light tight. One of the bottles exploded at some point, and tiny shards of glass were all over the box. A few were stuck into card board. I had to rinse the other 23 bottles since all were sticky, and toss the box and 6 pack carriers.

I would not have wanted to be within line of site just looking at all of the tiny glass shards (think shrapnel). Assuming that I either had a weak bottle or single bottle infection on that batch though, all the rest were fine.

Ok. So yeah

I've been keeping them in a box and right now they are plastic. But my next batch is going in glass this weekend. I'll continue the box approach maybe place the box on a trash bag ( I brew in 2 gallon batches)

I've read about bottles actually exploding. Some books recommend having a blanket over them so if one does explode it contains the mess and glass fragments a bit. Of course that won't help if it explodes during handling. It seems like anyway that the ez cap bottles would blow the lid off or leak before exploding, I have had some of those shoot the liquid a good foot high on opening but none have actually exploded. Capped bottles I am guessing would be more likely to explode. Plastic bottles can explode but those things can take a lot of pressure, I am guessing at least 100psig before exploding. They can be dangerous if your hand is on it when it explodes though, my nephew unfortunately got his thumb bone split down the middle that way by putting baking soda and vinegar in a pop bottle and them slamming it nose down on the concrete sidewalk. It was literally like a gunshot when it exploded.