Bottle Bomb/ Safety question

If you have never witnessed a bottle bomb explosion let me tell you the force is impressive. While holding a bottle from a suspect batch in my hand it exploded with unbelievable force. Shrapnel was thrown for over 25’. There are multiple cuts and contusions all over the body. None were serious enough for stitches but there was enough blood. The primary explosion set off 6 secondary explosions among the bottles setting on the counter below it. The past four hours have been spent cleaning up the kitchen. The remaining bottles were put in a sink full of water and then opened.

Several questions have arisen

Have the remaining 60 bottles been overstressed and are now suspect? There are no obvious cracks or defects.

The explosion sent infected beer all over the kitchen. There is no way you can sanitize every square inch of the kitchen that has been the bottling area in the past. Is there now a “house fungus” floating in the kitchen that may infect future batches?

Other than soaking in Clorox and water would you do anything else to sanitize the remaining bottles?

Thanks

I doubt it will affect future batches if you do a halfway decent job at cleaning up.

Never had a bottle bomb so I'm no help there.

This is what I do:
1. don't reuse your bottles more than 3 or so times.
2. Soak bottles in oxy clean and water solution over night. Rinse very thoroughly. Sanitize bottles and caps with star san. Bottle.

i agree you are in no danger of future contamination. this explosion may have absolutely nothing to do with an infection. the most common causes of bottle bombs is bottling before fermentation had actually finished. sometimes fermentation stalls out and then resumes once conditions change. also you may of added to much priming sugar. this can also lead to over carbonation and exploding bottles. i would suggest putting the rest in the fridge before they explode. this will stop the yeast from fermenting and allow the CO2 to absorb into the beer releaving the pressure.

I have had varying luck naturally carbing in bottles. I now will only use the Munton's carb tabs for this and only in very small batches that need bottled.

I have also had a bottle bomb, a few gushers and what I am guessing uneven mixing of the priming sugars. This also adds trub in the bottom of the bottles. I am pretty much all done with natural carbing.

Now I keg and highly recommend it. I can force carb, use my DIY counter pressure bottle filler when I need to bottle. My beer is now consistently carbed. Naturally carbing will slightly alter the flavor of the beer as well...IMO and it makes you wait longer before you can drink your delicious beer..

If you can not keg yet you can always look into a Miller/Coors Home Draft system. There are a few threads around that show how easy they are to re-use (I also use this system for small batches.) It has a pressure release value so I would guess it would be harder to have blow up...than a bottle!

I also have ez-cap and other flip top bottles, I will reuse these FOREVER until they break or crack and now use the crown capped bottles for gifts and competitions exclusively.

FYI I have noticed inconsistencies in the shaped Guinness Draught bottles concerning uniform glass thickness. I had one that was so thin in 1 spot it was clear (not brown glass clear) and it was about the size of a dime...

Jetsona, glad to hear you are ok.

slawre5 said:

This is what I do:
1. don't reuse your bottles more than 3 or so times.

Click to expand...

I've never heard this before. Anyone else follow this practice?

I think I have bottles I've used for every batch I've brewed so far. No way would i swap them out every 3-4 batches.

McGarnigle said:

I think I have bottles I've used for every batch I've brewed so far. No way would i swap them out every 3-4 batches.

Click to expand...

So the theory is that breweries use bottles intended for single use only these days...as recycled bottles aren't that useful to them anymore because so many bottles have imprinted labels on them. Those single use bottles are less durable than the old school bottles because...well obviously...they're not meant to be re-used...thinner and thus cheaper.

I always reuse my bottles as well to this point, and have yet to get burned. I believe it's highly dependent on how well you treat your bottles, and if you heat them (such as dry heat sterilization in the oven), they wear out sooner. Also, clanging around or banging on the countertop can weaken them. Treat them nicely and perhaps they'll treat you nicely by not blowing your hand off! Glad the OP is okay!

I had one go off in my closet while I was sitting on the couch about 10 ft away
scared the crap out of me

I've posted before trying to gauge the amount of priming sugar that finally crosses the line to "Yeah, that's definitely gonna create bottle bombs" but never got an actual guideline. Like we all know typical kits often come with 5oz of priming sugar and recommend that amount. So 6oz should be ok too no, since it's only a little more? Etc. But of course there's no real way to answer the question as each bottle had different tolerances. But it would've been nice to hear from people saying, "I've bottled plenty of times with -insert number here-oz with no problem".

So, to figure this out I am now testing with plastic bottles. Not the same as glass of course, but I think I can gauge mostly from there for glass bottles. I would just like a little more carbonation for certain beer types (like hefeweizens) and I don't want to try slightly higher amounts of priming sugar in bottles with the risk involved.

How much sugar did you prime with? You mentioned infection... do you think your beer was infected? I don't think infection would do much more than cause the beer to gush out, but I'm still to be considered a noob so what do I know?

Rev.

Your kitchen always has high levels of beer spoiling bacteria.

Ask a brewpub brewer about it, they have to worry about having a food prep area near the brewhouse. I bet they don't bottle in there.