Ok bottle bomb experts.....

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storytyme

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So yes I am a bit pissed at the moment. Actually a lot pissed. I go out and check my chest fermentor just to make sure all is ok. I have a batch fermenting plus 10 gallons+ of bottle beer from this past Friday. I have been brewing for over a year now and have done 26 or so batches. I have had bottle bombs before and have made some dumb errors (not cleaned properly, wrong storage temp, etc) So this time I went above and beyond to make sure everything was spot on. I bottled 2 separate batches and the bottle bombs were a couple from each batch. I am refusing to even clean it up until 2 weeks is up. Here is what I did and I need advice beyond the normal

(one batch was a Dunkel lager fermenting for 4 weeks+ and the other was a Christmas Spicy Ale fermented for 2 weeks. Both reached the FG that Beersmith said they would)

1) All bottles were used in prior homebrew batches and were rinsed with hot water after pouring.

2) Soaked all bottles in Oxyclean free with warm-hot water for 3+ hours. Rinsed with water.

3) Sanitized throughly all bottles with Star San plus all equipment (bottling bucket, bottle tree, auto siphon, hoses, bottle caps etc)

4) Used the exact amount of corn sugar according to style and measurements from Beersmith.

5) Racked and capped. Put bottles in chest fermentor temperature controlled at 69-70 degrees.

6) Today is day four of bottle conditioning and the bombs happened sometime between yesterday and today.

SO please experts out there help me out. And yes I am seriously considering going the kegging route since I don't enjoy bottling and even worse wasting time cleaning up a mess that I have no idea how it happened. So advice on this or advice on how to get into kegging help me please.

Ok, I feel better now.

-Cheers
 
Did you mix the sugar into the beer evenly? If not, the unequal distribution of sugar would have led to some bottles being more carbed than others.

That could explain what you observed, no? If course, you'd have had to do the same thing to both batches. If you're 26 batches in, then you probably already have the "mixing well" part figured out.

That's all I can think of. Sorry you've got such a mess to deal with!
 
I put the sugar into the bottling bucket, then put the beer in the bucket. Assumed that was good enough.

Also, I just looked closer and most of what I bottled were 22 oz bottles, but the 3 that broke were 12 oz bottles.
 
I overcarbed before because I measured out my dex for carbing based on what I thought was the final volume, but I lost a good chunk to the angel's share and hops. Boo. Is this a possibility? Does your bottling bucket have a volume indication? (mine is an old cooper's fermemter with the litres written on the side. No more of THAT mistake, my irish red was WAY to Carbed.
 
Are you boiling the water, adding the priming sugar, then cooling to 65-70°? I do that (covered) and pour it in the bottling bucket then transfer to the bottling bucket. That mixes it up good enough.
 
When i bottled i would also stir the beer after putting it onto the priming sugar solution for at LEAST 60 seconds. Just pouring the beer onto it can and in your case did lead to uneven distrobution of the priming sugars.

Kegging is the way to go but you WILL have to plop down at least another $300 or more depending if you have a fridge or not allready to put it into.
 
And kegging is so easy and wonderful. It's like magical unicorn dust
 
If all the bottles were from the same manufacturer and the same lot then it may just be a bad batch of bottles. If they were all different then I would recommend examining your capping prowess, if you are using too much force you might be making tiny stress fractures which then break wide open when pressurized. It is a long shot on both those but you seem to have covered all the normal bases.
 
Another little weird thing to always check, did you sanitize the spigot on the bottling bucket? I've read about people who never took it off and sanitized the o-rings.
 
Thank you everyone for the replies. Sorry I did not clarify, but I boiled the sugar for 15 min and cooled before adding.

All bottles are random.

I will reclean the spigot

I have an extra chest freezer with temp control that I can use for kegs. Can someone give me a place to start on the magical world of kegging? I have looked around online and seem a little hesitant (kind of like when I went to all grain)

Thank you everyone.
 
Go to the DIY forum and look up "keezer". I would guess there are more than 100 posts about it. Cheers
 
What was the amount of sugar that "Beersmith said" to use? And what were the FGs? I assume they were stable (not changing) over at least three days?

I ignore those priming calculators because I've seen this happen often, where they go by fermentation temperature and add too much priming sugar or too little.

For lagers, I use 1 ounce of corn sugar by weight of finished beer. Normally, that's about 4.5 ounces of sugar per batch.

Also, Beersmith is terrible at predicting FG. It's just at best a guestimate of the attenuation % of the ingredients. If it's a reasonable FG, say, 1.014 for your lager, then that's ok but I've seen some wild FG predictions in Beersmith.
 
Can someone give me a place to start on the magical world of kegging?

If you have one locally, go to a `welding supply shop`.
They are where you will get your CO2 tank re-filled when needed &
will have the tank/pressure guages and regulators in stock.
You will need of course a keg, a tap, beer lines,gas lines, & a `manifold` if you plan on running more than one keg.(or want to carb a 2nd keg without unplugging the 1rst keg)

I got my keg system from B.I.Y. Homebrew supply.
Joe from there will basically pre-assemble a kit for you.
Their # is (319) 373-BEER
Their addy is
147 Marion Blvd #C, Marion, IA 52302
It's pretty much a 1 man show there so you might have to leave a message an his machine but he's usually pretty good about getting back to you.
 
Are you sure that they were done. The FG given by brew software is just an estimate. Quite often my brews end up a few points lower.

I am guessing that is your problem, more so than priming sugar. Priming sugar being off a little will not cause bottle bombs. It take quite a lot of extra sugar to do that.

I do not understand why some feel the need to answer a bottling question with "You should keg" It does nothing to answer the question that was asked.
 
Have you opened a beer from the batch that did not explode? Was it over carbonated? What temp did you ferment at?

I had a batch two months ago of a German altbier that fermented a 62ºF, and when I bottled it I calculated the priming sugar to give me 2.7 volumes of CO2. What I did not take into account was there was already about 1.5 Volumes of CO2 dissolved in the beer due to fermenting at a cooler temp. The beer ended up well over carbed, but they were all new bottles and did not result in bottle bombs but I could see if the bottles were old and a little fragile they might have blown.
 
So like you OP, I am having issues with bottle bombs since using Beersmith. I am convinced this is user error as I have had 100% success copying recipes from other breweries.

My last 2 batches I followed the beersmith instructions to a T.

Beersmith says I should add 5.14 oz of DME for roughly 4.25 gallons of volume.

Checked, and double checked that gravity is stable.
Measured DME out (by weight) and boiled for about 5 minutes then cooled.
dropped DME solution in bottling bucket then added beer.
Meticulously sanitized bottles and equipment.
Bottled and capped. Placed in an ice chest. Bottle explodes after just 2 days.
the result is 100% of my bottles are way over carbonated (see video)

The ONLY thing i can think of is that i do not have a fermentation chamber yet, and the temperature did reach the high 80's in my house for a day or so. but this has never been an issue on the last 10 batches of beer i have made.

As i type this, i am in the process of putting together a fermentation chamber with a dual stage temp controller. I just want to make sure i'm not missing anything else before i explode another batch of beer. I know that a stable temprature is key, but i cant help but feel that i am getting the wrong measurements on the priming sugar.

Looking forward to your feedback, Cheers!!

Heres the video. [ame]http://youtu.be/FXtusxdLRzY[/ame]
 

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