Bottle Bombs?

I think I overprimed my hefeweizen last night; My scales were calibrated way off before adding the glucose and I only noticed this morning - I used 225g for 19 litres which is well above the 190g I've been told is safe to use. Am I in danger of exploding banana bombs?

You are probably ok, but I would play it safe and keep them in a cool place and with something around them to soak up flying glass just in case.

Sounds like a lot to me. Even 190g sounds like a lot. I use around 125-135g for a highly carbonated hefe of 19L. I've never had bottle bombs so I don't know where the limit is, but I'd be concerned.

Hmmm, decisions decisions!

I was aiming for high carbonation but this may be a little 'lively' (ahem)

Maybe I'm not measuring this correctly - here's how I normally measure my priming sugar:

I normally go for the equivalent of a teaspoon of glucose per 500 ml bottle (just under a pint). I equate this teaspoon to 5g.

So I estimate a 19L batch to be 38 bottles.

38 x 5 would give me 190. I've done this before and haven't had to take shelter.

225g works out at almost 6g per bottle; almost 15% higher than normal.

Maybe I'm just trying to convince myself that I haven't ****** up

I've always measured priming sugars by volume rather than by weight. Your way sounds more accurate, that is if the scale is calibrated correctly.

What does 225 grams translate into cups as? Anything relatively close to one cup should be fine. Weigh some up and pour it into a measuring cup to see.

I guess you should just let the beer carbonate to your preference, then store the rest of the bottles in the fridge until they are drank.

I go by weight. For 5g/19L of beer carbonated to 2.8 CO2 by vol (a high level of carbonation IMO) I would use about 5oz/140g (more than I initially thought). For another syle of beer with medium carbonation (2.3 or so) I would use 3.75oz/105g in 5g/19L of beer.

190g of corn sugar would be 6.7oz and would result in around 3.4 CO2 by vol which seems high to me, but perhaps is still within range for hefeweizen. I do generally speaking prefer a lower level of carbonation.

I have difficulty converting between metric and imperial and dry and liquid weights so I normally rely on Google.

Problem is it says 1 *US* cup is 8 *FLUID* ounces. OK then... Then it says 8 fl oz is 235 ml. Um.. fine...

BUT here's my problem - 1 cup of table sugar will not weigh the same as 1 cup of glucose as glucose is finer and will weigh more in the same quantity. Now I know 8oz is 225 grams which is what I dumped in when bulk priming.

So I guess to answer your question I'll need to pose another one - can you compare dry weight and liquid weight - i.e. is 8 *fluid* ounces roughly equal to 8 ounces?

I think I need a beer

bigears said:

So I guess to answer your question I'll need to pose another one - can you compare dry weight and liquid weight - i.e. is 8 *fluid* ounces roughly equal to 8 ounces?

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It varies with the ingredient, but roughly 1/4 cup is 1.5 oz. for DME. Corn sugar is a little lighter...5 oz is about 2/3 cups, IIRC.

I think you will be fine with your carbonation,It my be more that you like but hey its a learning experience just be sure to open the first one outside.

When I was first brewing I bottled a mead way before it was done fermenting. I don't know exactly how much pressure there was, but when I opened them they blasted like champagne. Long story short... it takes A LOT of carbonation to make bombs.

But if you are worried, then keep them as cold as possible( but not freezing) ... that will reduce the amount of pressure on the glass.

Just check it in a week. If it has enough carbonation for you then refridgerate the bottles to retard the carbbing process.

Hi,

The standard procedure as far as I know is to put 5 ounces corn sugar in a sauce pan, add 1 cup of water and boil for a few minutes, cool and toss it in the bucket with the fermented brew just prior to bottling. This has always worked great for me. You should be able to buy corn sugar from whereever you buy your extracts and yeast. The only time I ever had exploeing bottles was when I tried to make root beer. It sounded like world war 3 in the middle of the night and the mess was unbelieveable.

Regards

David

Well, the temperature outside is pretty low at the moment so the bottles are sitting at around 8-12 C (46 - 53 F) in the house at the moment. This should help to slow down the carbonation process a little. I've wrapped both crates in a towel to keep the spotential shrapnel close to home

I'm going to hope for the best for now. One of the bottles is a swing-top Grolsch style cap so I might test that at the weekend. If it's releasing a lot of CO2 maybe I can release a little from the other bottles and recap. David - I'm curious to know if you remember how much sugar you primed with when you had your explosions - can you remember? Glucose/Dextrose and corn sugar are one and the same as far as I know.

bigears said:

BUT here's my problem - 1 cup of table sugar will not weigh the same as 1 cup of glucose as glucose is finer and will weigh more in the same quantity.

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The same volume of (powdery) glucose will weigh less than table sugar. Quite a bit less...

So when one makes a bottle bomb, does the bottle actually explode? Or does it just blow the cap off? I would think the cap seal would be a lot weaker then the glass of the bottle.

My experiences are with the caps holding and glass breaking most frequently about 1 to 2 inches from the top. But can also break at the neck flare.

mezman said:

So when one makes a bottle bomb, does the bottle actually explode? Or does it just blow the cap off? I would think the cap seal would be a lot weaker then the glass of the bottle.

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Yes, the bottle does explode! Of course, it's always at the weakest pressure point.

The only exploding bottles I've experienced came from homemade root beer. Most of the time the bottoms were blown off.

bigears said:

the bottles are sitting at around 8-12 C (46 - 53 F) in the house at the moment. This should help to slow down the carbonation process a little. I've wrapped both crates in a towel to keep the spotential shrapnel close to home

Click to expand...

That's too low a temp. Put your bottles at a temp closer to 70F. You'll need the (relative) heat to keep the yeast active and the sugar to revert to carbonation. Test a bottle in a week or so for carbonation. If it is still too low wait another week. Chances are it'll be fine though. Then move the bottles to a cooler area to retard the process.

BTW, I usually prime my HWs with 1.25 C corn sugar and have never had a bottle bomb with beer.

How does that equate to your priming?

I tried one last night and it didn't gush - it's actually forming a nice head - but I did have the temperature quite low to retard the carbonation a little - started off around 10c and has been at up to 16c (60F) for the second half of the week. I'll look at moving it somehwere warmer now that an explosion doesn't look imminent. I'm not too sure what 1.25 cups equates to but I have a feeling it's not too far off what I primed with.

I follow recipes but never use the recomendations on priming.
Instead I use the idea of this link: Primer on priming.

I always go by weight rather than volume. the concepts are useful to anything you want to use to prime:
table sugar, DME, corn sugar, syrups. You only need sugar concentration and composition of the primer (that usually is available from the label on the product).

Update:

It's now 3 weeks since I bottled. Luckily I haven't had any explosions. The level of carbonation is actually what I would expect from a weissbier; not over the top - so all in all it worked out quite well. The beer is still a little harsh but is beginning to smooth out so I'm hoping it will be the business in a few weeks. Thanks for all the tips!