cork pop

I came down into the basment today and notice a single cork sitting next to the couch. After careful investigation I discovered that one of the bottles on my near by mead rack was missing it's cork. The mead had spilled all over the carpet. The alleged wife now fears that this will happen to the other bottles (approx 50) that are also stacked on the mead rack. The mead was brewed in fall of last year and has been bottled for several months (a computer crash led the loss of beersmith and all exact dates). Will more bottles continue to pop? Should I uncork to release any possible built up pressure and then recork? Or just ride it out and see what happens?

I did recently move and all bottles may have been shaken during the move. Storage conditions are pretty much the same between houses, kept in basement. I did notice what appears to be some mead seaping out of some of the corks on other bottles. Almost like small drops coming from the middle of the cork itself. This is the first really warm temp in my area. Is it possible the yeast reactivated? I have the ABV% and will post them after work.

Thanks for the help,
your pal
THE CAD

alleged wife, you mean you're not sure she's your wife?

"Alleged wife" LOL.

It is likely that every bottle from that same batch will pop. You didn't properly ensure that the yeast was dead/inert/pooped, so they kept fermenting.

All the bottles form that batch have the risk of blowing there corks or blowing up. I'd uncork them, stabilize them in bulk and re-bottle. Avoiding excessive aeration. You can also quarantine them some-where safe until you get a chance to drink them. Be careful moving them as you don't know what kind of pressure some of the bottles are under.

If you can get them cold (refrigerated) and keep them that way it'll probably be ok. If not, as others said above, you're going to need to stabilize those bottles.

Other considerations/options:

There's a chance that the one bottle had some sort of contamination/infection that caused additional fermentation. Open one of the other bottles...is it carbonated? If so, then that's good evidence that there's batch-wide continued fermentaton and a good chance (as others have stated) that you could have the same thing happen again.

Do you have any info on basics of the recipe (especially OG and FG at bottling)?

You could consider checking a gravity sample now from one of the other bottles...

You could consider bottle pasteurizing them (still may need to uncork/recork, but at least you're not pouring out the bottles and refilling...don't care how careful you are, there is very likely to be some aeration which could be harmful/cause oxidation.)

Chilling them will slow down any ongoing process, but it may not necessarily prevent additional bottle bombs (just make them less likely), so I'd still keep them in some sort of watertight container in the fridge...

uncorked all the bottles, most opened with a "pop" so there was some pressure building. Going to let them sit in the bottle in my "sanatized tent" for a bit and see what happens. All OG and FG readings were sadly lost in the great computer crash of 2013, nerdlinger ( the computer guy at best buy) is working to find files on it, but the black board of death indicates that it had about 9.7 ABV. The recipie had around 10 lbs of honey and about 5lbs of black berry puree. took a gravitty reading from one of the bottles. Gonna wait a few days and see what happens.

Also have a version of Viking Blod that I made and has been bottled for a while. that finished with a much higher ABV, around 16, again all numbers are lost. Should I uncork that as well or wait and see if one pops?

Your pal,
THE CAD

PS: she is the alleged wife because I don't remember agreeing to any of this. i was tricked and deceived by black magic and sorcery

thecad said:

PS: she is the alleged wife because I don't remember agreeing to any of this. i was tricked and deceived by black magic and sorcery

Click to expand...

One of the few things that will follow you home from Vegas.

thecad said:

THE CAD

PS: she is the alleged wife because I don't remember agreeing to any of this. i was tricked and deceived by black magic and sorcery

Click to expand...

Black Magic or some homebrew that went off the map?

Dunno about whether you'd need to check the Viking Blod clone or not.

What you do need to do, is to either stabilise your meads or to leave them aging in bulk for much, much longer. Then get used to gravity testing multiple times to make sure that all fermentation activity is definitely completed.

You're lucky if it's just the one bottle that's pushed it's cork and maybe another that's seeped a bit. Bottle bombs are no laughing matter. It might not just be you that is there and handling a bottle if it blew. There's often other family members and possibly pets to think of.

Thus far, I've only had a 2 litre plastic bottle from some ginger beer blow on me. No cuts/lascerations, but it still stung like hell..........

Hey, I've had bottle bombs from commercial wines. Although it was a relatively small winery, so maybe their procedures aren't much different from we hobbyists', allowing the occasional QC problem.

I'm gonna check the Viking Blod on my next days off and see if i get a "pop" when it opens. Then of course I have to sample it for QC reasons. Will the bottles actually burst or will the corks just continue to shoot out?