Yet another bottling question.

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BryanThompson

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I did a search on this but couldn't find anything but, I bottled my first lambic two nights ago and in order to be able to enter it into the Kentucky State Fair I had to put some into long necks. Each bottle was primed to give 4.5 volumes of CO2. If I used good bottles without imperfections like bubbles and whatnot, will I run the risk of bottle bombs? I went ahead and placed the bottles into a box and put the box into a thick garbage bag just in case, I just wanted to see if you all thought it would be fine.
 
It's probably good that you took the precautions you did, as I've heard from numerous sources that standard brown beer bottles without imperfections can withstand no more than 2.8, maybe 3, volumes of CO2. Let us know how it turns out!
 
Yeah those bottles are definitely not designed to handle that much pressure.

The saving grace for you is if that beer sat for a year or so there's a lot less CO2 in suspension so you probably won't have 4.5 volumes. You might be lucky to get to 2.5 volumes. However, if you didn't let that beer age very long you might end up with a lot of extra fermentation in those bottles.
 
The carbonation should be fairly low. It is only seven months old, but I moved the fermentor about two miles to my new house so that should have brought a lot of the CO2 out of solution. When I figured how much priming sugar to use I put the temperature that the fermenter was sitting at as 80 degrees instead of figuring from zero.
 
i accidently used double priming sugar for a batch (used 5 gallons worth of sucrose for a 2.5 gallon batch). i used 4 ounces in 2.5 gallons which works out to just over 4.0 volumes co2. the beer came out extremely fizzy but i didn't have even one bottle break.
 
I recently had a bit of a screw up where I added three times too much priming sugar. It was bottled in standard 12oz longnecks. None broke but it was undrinkable because when you opened it the beer shot out like a huge fountain. There's no way to get the beer in the glass before it poured out all over the counter, walls and ceiling. Fortunately it didn't taste very good so I didn't lose anything of value, just some time cleaning. However, those bottles sat at room temperature for a couple weeks then spent a few days in the fridge.

I'd be most concerned about how those bottles do sitting in postal warehouses and trucks when it's 100+ out. You'll have to keep us updated on whether comments come back that the bottles were busted upon arrival.
 
Each bottle was primed to give 4.5 volumes of CO2.

1) Your bottles probably won't explode. If they do, it will probably be on the judges. ;) Gusher, anyone? (I nearly drowned my phone with one gusher!)

2) It's the BJCP judge in me coming out, but if you entered it as a lambic (and it carbonates well), you will get dinged for it not being carbonated to style. Lambics are nearly uncarbonated. Gueuze is highly carbonated. Just FYI.
 
You should be fine, most bottles can withstand way more than that. I wouldn't recommend making it a habit as some bottles are weaker than others and you are just gambling, waiting for a bottle to eventually explode.

It's probably good that you took the precautions you did, as I've heard from numerous sources that standard brown beer bottles without imperfections can withstand no more than 2.8, maybe 3, volumes of CO2. Let us know how it turns out!

Precautions are always good.

I regularly bottle to 3 volumes in standard bottles and not had a bottle explode (single exception noted below).

I recently had a bottle of stout explode on me. It was a stout, bottled to about 2.5 volumes. I checked the gravity of the beer from another bottle and found it had dropped about .006 since bottling; that's about 6 additional volumes. I did drink the rest of the bottles quickly, many were gushers, but only 1 bottle broke after carbonating to about 8 volumes.
 
I'd be most concerned about how those bottles do sitting in postal warehouses and trucks when it's 100+ out. You'll have to keep us updated on whether comments come back that the bottles were busted upon arrival.

Luckily that won't be an issue. I will be driving them to the state fair still in the trash bag and with the AC on. Once they arrive they will be sitting in the AC waiting for judging.

You should be fine, most bottles can withstand way more than that. I wouldn't recommend making it a habit as some bottles are weaker than others and you are just gambling, waiting for a bottle to eventually explode.

There needs to be a way to enter lambics in champagne/belgian bottles. Everything must be in a 12 ounce longneck or it faces disqualification.
 
I talked to Tim at the club meeting last night and he told me they wouldn't dq the heavier 11.2 oz bottles as long as there's no raised lettering. Sounds too late for this batch, but FYI.
 
They're the ones that a lot of Belgians come in like monks cafe. Kind of look like longnecks but with smoother shoulders.
 
I'm seeing a lot of speculation in this thread and little actual knowledge and when it comes to dealing with something as potentially dangerous as a bottle bomb, going off of "I think" and "this one time I did this" doesn't cut it. I put this together a while ago...didn't seem to get too much interest so I didn't persue it much further but its still good info IMO. The two important things to note are that there is a lot of variation in quality of 12 ounce bottles and the second is that even the quality heavy duty 230 g bottles from Deschutes is only rated to 3.0 volumes on its first bottling and degrades from there. In fact, even they heavy duty little bottles from Russian River are only rated to 4.0 volumes. To get safely higher than that you need a champagne bottle.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/bottle-co2-volume-capacities-261268/
 
Thanks for the link, it will help a lot on the next batch. Is there any bottles that can take the high carbonation levels of a gueuze but still be allowed into competitions?
 
Thanks for the link, it will help a lot on the next batch. Is there any bottles that can take the high carbonation levels of a gueuze but still be allowed into competitions?

I didn't get much data on the Belgian bottles, but what Vinnie gave me says that they aren't strong enough. Maybe you could find them for sale online. Or go with the small RR bottles. Maybe not rated to gueze levels but 4.0 volumes is pretty good. Or you could buy bottles of small gueze, drink em up and save the bottles as those are obviously safe for that level.
 
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