transporting (moving) homebrew in bottle

about a month ago i took some homebrews in a bottle to michigan and thought nothing of it.. well when i opened them they could just gush out of the bottle. and the ones at home were fine. about two days ago i moved my mini fridge to the other side of the basement and the same thing happened to me. is there something that im doing wrong? can you not take homebrew and move it around? im planning next month to bring a lot for my wife and i baby shower to michigan for the family to try. should i not risk any bottle gushers? and just keep everything here 5 hrs away?

I take mine to parties often in a cooler w/bottles of ice. Never had a gusher. Then on this island I never have to drive more than 1 1/2 hours to reach the far end. LOL

I transport my brew in bottles all the time. The trick is, keeping them cold. If I let a brew get warm, the CO2 just blows out of the liquid, and sometimes it will gusher...

Keep them cold. Let the sediment settle. Transport them upright.

The gushing happens with temperature (CO2 comes out of solution and needs to be chilled for a bit to redissolve)
Sediment being stirred up provides nuculeation points for the CO2 to bubble on. Transporting upright stirs it up less.

You should be able to move the beer just fine. Thousands of people ship beer to competitions every year, without any problem. I've personally taken beer over 2000 miles in my vehicle, staying in motels for 3 days at a time and never chilled the beer during that time. I also have bottled beer at room temperature around all the time, without any problems. The same with commercial beer- you can buy it and not have to keep it cold 100% of the time.

It sounds like something is going wrong when the bottles get to warm temperature, like fermentation is restarting or something. Are you 100% sure the beer is finished when it's bottled? Or could it be the beginning of a gusher infection in the bottles?

I'd go over the whole bottling process to look for an issue there.

I find that transporting bottles, even a short distance, is a PITA. I go to great lengths to keep the sediment from mixing into the beer but it seems I never succeed. Unless I know that the beer has time to sit in a fridge once it reaches its destination then it usually isn't worth my time.

well back to the drawing board.. lets say i have bottles in fridge for 3 to 4 days then take them on a bumpy ride (car) could that be an issue of not having the yeast settle?

it depends how long after getting to your destination you plan on drinking the beer. i find if i try and drink it straight after driving to my mums place 2 hours away the results are never good. if i can wait and leave them in the fridge for at least a few hours then it's much better.

Upthewazzu said:

I find that transporting bottles, even a short distance, is a PITA. I go to great lengths to keep the sediment from mixing into the beer but it seems I never succeed. Unless I know that the beer has time to sit in a fridge once it reaches its destination then it usually isn't worth my time.

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this is the one bummer that keeps me from taking my beer to family events

Krazykripple said:

it depends how long after getting to your destination you plan on drinking the beer. i find if i try and drink it straight after driving to my mums place 2 hours away the results are never good. if i can wait and leave them in the fridge for at least a few hours then it's much better.

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i plan on letting them sit at least over night.. so all i can hope for is the best

I agree with Yooper(as usual). I've never had a problem traveling with homebrew. I usually refrigerate it when I arrive, no problems with gushers.

i agree with yooper as well .. i just need to clean those bottles better and hope thats the problem..

I moved from california to colorado and my homebrew with a moving truck. I didn't have any issues moving it and they were not refrigerated during the move. (800mile drive / 12 hours in the rattle-can that was that moving van).

Mines were american hefe's, so my carbonation wasn't super high, that could make a difference.

I also as well too agree with yooper

I shipped homebrew last month. It worked out fine even though one bottle was opened less than 24 hours after it arrived at the destination and stuck in a fridge that was barely cold. It was of course even better when I got to that destination (4 days later) and the beer was nice and chilled.