Anyone ever "Bust a cap?"

I just had a strange thing happen. I was loading my fridge with homebrew to take to a party this weekend. And as I was putting stuff in I dropped one of my vintage pint bottles that was holding my Oak Aged IIPA.

It landed on it's side and the capped area hit the floor and beer started to foam out from under the cap. It started to gush out since the beer was warm.

I grabbed my capper and re-crimped it, which stopped the gushing and I put it in the fridge. I'll drink it tomororw and see if it is still carbed. I think I spilled maybe 3-4 ounces from the pint, so there is plenty left. I'd hate to waste the beer. It was a fantastic experimental batch.

I don't think the glass of the lip broke, since capping stopped the gushing rather than the whole lip shattering. These are the antique 1970's era shlitz pints I have shown pictures of, and I have had a few bust here and there, these:



But I don't think it broke.

Has anyone ever knocked a bottle cap loose before that easily? Either a commercial or homebrew one?

It's happened to me with homebrew bottles.

HalfPint said:

It's happened to me with homebrew bottles.

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Do you think it's because we don't tighten them enough?

It has happened to me with a commercial beer, but I don't know if I would have called it something "easy". The bottle smacked my countertop REALLY hard. Hard enough that I was shocked that it didn't break. I thought it had broken because of the beer spilling onto the counter, but it was just a cap that bent a little at the edge and broke the seal on the bottle.

edit: this was a one time thing, and I considered it a freak thing. I've seen weirder stuff, that's for sure.

You only needed to deform it enough to break the seal. They are a soft metal. Ever use the handle of a butter knife to knock on a jar lid that was hard to get off so that the seal would break and it would open?

I've done this many times doing the open a beer bottle with a beer bottle trick. The opener beer only gets a slight push on the side of the cap, similar to the slight push the falling bottle would have gotten.

Like Hermit said, you only need to deform it ever so slightly before you disrupt the seal and the beer comes gushing out.

Yeah, it's happened to me when I've hit another bottle with a bottle. I was pulling a bottle out of a case, dropped it on another, and the other bottle began spewing out of the cap. I simply put both of them in the fridge and drank them later that night.

Happens all the time at work with commercial beer, anything from BMC, to Micros, to Imports.

I dropped a 20oz bottle of homebrew once... it slammed against the ground right side up... The cap blew off and beer hit my ceiling... the bottle was fine, though i never used it again... It sits on my bottling table with its crown glued on... king of bottles indeed

Not to change the thread around but I have had to exact opposite happen. I was younger (Under 21) and dumb and was trying for the life of me to get a cap off a pacifico 32 oz, no I did not have a bottle opener or a lighter and was prying a sharp edged rock under the lip of the cap and the bottle cap shot off and sliced me under the eye. When I looked down at my beer I noticed it took the part of the bottle (were the cap gets crimped) with it hence the cut on my face. I have never seen glass break like that under pressure to this day.