I bottled up a chocolate stout 3 weeks ago in a mix of 14oz and 750ml brown PET bottles. I threw all the bottles into a kitchen cabinet where it stays a nice dark 73F.
Yesterday I grabbed a couple and put them in the fridge. After an hour patiently waiting for the beer to cool, I pulled one out and found the plastic cap was not at all tight on the bottle. Needless to say the beer was pretty flat (though still tasty). I grabbed the other bottle from the fridge and it's cap was also not tight. Sensing a problem, I went through all the bottles in my cabinet. Probably 3/4 of them were loose. I know I tightened all of the caps when I bottled (I even went back and double checked them all after I had problems getting one on straight).
I'm thinking it may be pressure causing the caps to back off on the threads, but I'm not sure. Another problem (maybe related?) is that the 750mL bottles that didn't have loose caps are all bulging. The bottom of the bottles are nearly round and the caps actually have a small dome in the middle! It's only the big bottles that are like this, the smaller ones with good caps seem normal. I racked 5 gallons on top of 2 cups of water boiled with 4.5oz of corn sugar and stirred very well. I'm pretty sure I'm not over primed and it should have been well mixed.
Any thoughts? I'm hoping that there's enough priming sugar left in the bottles to allow them to carb a bit after I re-tightened the caps or is this a lost cause?
Thanks,
Terje
Yesterday I grabbed a couple and put them in the fridge. After an hour patiently waiting for the beer to cool, I pulled one out and found the plastic cap was not at all tight on the bottle. Needless to say the beer was pretty flat (though still tasty). I grabbed the other bottle from the fridge and it's cap was also not tight. Sensing a problem, I went through all the bottles in my cabinet. Probably 3/4 of them were loose. I know I tightened all of the caps when I bottled (I even went back and double checked them all after I had problems getting one on straight).
I'm thinking it may be pressure causing the caps to back off on the threads, but I'm not sure. Another problem (maybe related?) is that the 750mL bottles that didn't have loose caps are all bulging. The bottom of the bottles are nearly round and the caps actually have a small dome in the middle! It's only the big bottles that are like this, the smaller ones with good caps seem normal. I racked 5 gallons on top of 2 cups of water boiled with 4.5oz of corn sugar and stirred very well. I'm pretty sure I'm not over primed and it should have been well mixed.
Any thoughts? I'm hoping that there's enough priming sugar left in the bottles to allow them to carb a bit after I re-tightened the caps or is this a lost cause?
Thanks,
Terje