The Curse of 1.020

I made a stout this past winter and after 10 days in the primary and then 53 days in the secondary the fg was 1.020 with a og of 1.060. I know a little high but I went ahead and bottled. I figured it was done. Well I walked into the beer cellar (a spare room in the basement which stays around 60 year round) yesterday and beer on the floor and a shattered bottle on the shelf. My first beer bomb. So I took one and opened it and waited for the foam to stop coming out and took a gravity reading and guess what 1.010 a ten point drop. I then did some research on the forums and I unfortunately deiced to not chance more bombs and I dumped it.

My question is Do you think it is safe to reuse those bottles or have they been weaken and may or may not hold regular carb pressure?

Thanks

My guess it the bottles are fine. Glass is very brittle. It is either fine or it's broken--it has practically zero elasticity. Consequently, it can't suffer from fatigue from being stressed. I would love to hear the experts chime in on this though, how the beer sat in primary/secondary for 63 days and apparently, was not done fermenting. I bottled my first homebrew at 1.020 and haven't had any problems. Everyone on here indicates that the dry yeast I was using (Muntons, only 1-pack) tends to be lazy and give up too soon.

I just doubled checked the dates and yes I brewed the batch on 10-11-08 and bottled on 12-13-08 and the yeast was safale s-04. By the way it tasted fine. No off or bad tastes but lots of carbonation. It was definitely drier than I had remembered it for a month or so ago.

Dale

You dumped it?

Why didn't you just open then recap all of the bottles?

I did think about recapping but the more I thought about it the more I didn't like the idea. I did do some research on the boards and found that oxidation would become a problem and after watching the foam pour out of the bottles I would be maybe recapping half full bottles. I let it go and will learn from the mistake.

I can understand your thinking but...

Dump when you confirm that it is bad, not when you think it might be bad.

That was a lot of time and effort you tossed out.

Sounds like a better idea would be to invite a few friends over and drink all the beer.

Designate someone the opener! Heavy gloves, face shield and arm guards when opening them.

BargainFittings said:

Sounds like a better idea would be to invite a few friends over and drink all the beer.

Designate someone the opener! Heavy gloves, face shield and arm guards when opening them.

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gonna +1 that.

you should have used the opportunity to have a very 'ed night

but yeah those, bottles are fine. did you at least give it a few good tastes to see how it turned out???

blah at this point i don't think i'd have the money to dump a batch even if i wanted to. without breaking down into tears of course.

Some of those bottles was like dropping mentos into diet coke.The foam literally shot out the top 4-6 inches. I was lucky only one bottle blew up. Yes I tasted it and if was fine.