Bottle Bomb Went Off

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Kevin Dean

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Last year, I think as my second batch and last planned extract batch, I brewed up some of Yuri's Thunderstruck Pumpkin Ale. While it's a good beer, and it was LOVED at my company's Christmas party, I didn't like it because it contained pumpkin. Live and learn.

Because I didn't like it, I've been letting a couple big 22 ouncers sit atop my kegerator for the past 8 months or so. This, I learned, probably not such a great thing.

My wife and I were in the bedroom reading when we heard this massive crash. I got up to see what happened and found the top of the kegerator was dripping streams of sticky pumpkin beer down.

One of the big bottles had exploded, and instead of the cap popping the bottle exploded into shards of glass shrapnel. It went with such force that the shards, as they were hurrling outward, shattered my Pyrex graduated cylinder, broke my hydrometer, caused the OTHER 22 ouncer of pumpkin ale's neck to break off and fall to the ground, contributing to the large lake of beer that was forming below my coffee maker.

I'm actually pretty damn thankful I wasn't in the room, that could have been VERY gruesome if I had.

Anyone know of they make metal swingtops?
 
Funny you mention this because yesterday I had a 22oz bottle randomly blow up from a batch that was carbed perfectly 4 months prior. What sucked was that it was sitting on the top shelf of my cabinet where I keep ALL my sanitized bottles and 1gal carboys. It got everywhere. Beer and tiny glass shards everywhere.

...I'm still re-cleaning and sanitizing all of them. I still have no idea why that single bottle blew up.
 
It was a VERY hot day, I'm sure the heat had somethign to do with my explosion.

I'm still picking glass shards out of the damndest places. I had a counter full of bottles and I've actually found pieces of the 'sploded bottles in the others.
 
I'm wondering if it isnt the lager bottles. I had a 1 liter flip top go on me a while back . This was the last one of five in that size still full. All the 12 oz are left are still fine.
 
I leave a little extra neckspace on larger bottles when I fill them for that very reason. I'm terrified of bottle bombs.
 

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