My first bottle bombs!

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Jim Karr

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Just before New Year's Day I brewed a five gallon batch using an old, old M/F can kit. New yeast. 36 hours of violent fermentation. Then it died. DEAD.

I (being a newbie) panicked. I added some barley malt sugar (not DME). No extra hops (remember I was a newbie).

Well, the extra sugar fermented for an additionally short time. I bottled, put into cases, stored in the basement.

Some of the bottle caps started to dome and bulge. I then realized that the unfermented sugar was like a monster priming load.

Well, it's now September. I thought to look inside the last case last night. Three bottles inside were just shards and fragments of glass. Caps were still in place on the tops of the bottles. The beer (if you can call it that) had soaked into the cardboard boxes and seeped into the concrete floor underneath. Nothing in the box was now wet, just musty.

Some of the glass fragments had buried themselves deeply into the cardboard; I'm glad they were inside the box!
 
All you have to do now is break a glass carboy and you'll be a member of the club! I'm assuming you've had a boilover already. Oh yeah, refrigerate the rest and drink them quick!
 
Ahhh, those were the days. I remember it clearly even if it wasn't 18 years ago. Man was SWMBO pissed when she found them weeks after they exploded. She still won't let me forget it.

Welcome to the club! Now it's time to KEG some beer.
 
Never had a keg burst, but it's a real rush when you use one of those little CO2 guns and the relief valve cuts loose a foot from your head!
 
Man, this sounds scary. I don't want to be part of the bottle bomb club.

How about some tips from you more experienced folks on how to avoid joining the club?
 
beer4breakfast said:
Man, this sounds scary. I don't want to be part of the bottle bomb club.

How about some tips from you more experienced folks on how to avoid joining the club?

i'm with you, not a club i wanna be a part of...:)
 
beer4breakfast said:
How about some tips from you more experienced folks on how to avoid joining the club?

  1. Buy good bottles. I recommend using the German .5 liter bottles. It will give you an excuse to buy some great beer at the store while you are collecting the bottles.
  2. Make sure you use the proper amount of priming sugar and make sure it is well mixed in the beer before you bottle.
  3. Skip steps 1 and 2 and keg your beer.
 
EdWort said:
  1. Buy good bottles. I recommend using the German .5 liter bottles. It will give you an excuse to buy some great beer at the store while you are collecting the bottles.

I've not had many German beers but one in recent years. I generally go for the English ales. The one German beer I usually buy is one I like a lot - Schneider Aventinus... It's got a lot of yeast in it, and I discovered I have to pour it carefully to avoid getting too much of the sediment in my glass - got any other German beer suggestions?

As for kegging, I plan to do that eventually...
 
beer4breakfast said:
I've not had many German beers but one in recent years. I generally go for the English ales. The one German beer I usually buy is one I like a lot - Schneider Aventinus... It's got a lot of yeast in it, and I discovered I have to pour it carefully to avoid getting too much of the sediment in my glass - got any other German beer suggestions?

At my local grocery store, I can get .5 liter bottles of Franziskanner Hefeweizen, Paulener Hefeweizen, Spaten Hell, just to name a few. The bottle is very heavy duty and will last a long time till you drop it.

Since these beers are sold by the bottle mostly, ask your store what German beers they can order as long as they come in .5 liter bottles. You may get a better price if you order a case, plus you will have a nice cardboard box to keep the empties as you drink them. I picked up a case of Paulener Hefe this way and it worked out well and saved 50 cents a bottle plus I kept the bottle.
 
I've found a good selection of German beer...a list of some try-outs is in order!
 
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