fermentation explosion!

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simster571

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ok so i bottled my other brew i was making and decided to get started on the 2nd recipe i had for this mr beer kit right away. The new recipe is "strawbeery blonde". It is supposed to have 6.6% abv from just the kit...but in the mr. beer manual it said that by adding 2 cups of sugar to the wort it was increase this number 1.5%...so i did it. Now im not sure if that information is relevent to what happened, but I thought id throw it in anyways.

so last night I hear i very loud pop...i just thought the cat knocked something off the counter. But when i woke up and checked on the mr beer....I found that the lid of the keg had blown off...what a mess. I have beer on the ceiling, walls, floor, shelfs, everywhere. And when i looked, foam all over the top of it coming out of the fermenter. all i did was clean the lid and take a towel and wipe off the exess foam and put the lid back on....the beer is still going crazy in the fermenter.

so my questions are:
1. why did this happen?
2. since the lid came off, is the beer ruined?
3. Could this happen again, and how could i prevent it?
4. Did i lose to much yeast for it to ferment and bottle right now?
5. do they make ceiling mops? lol
 
i believe the sugar you added caused some hefty carbonation! aren't the lids to the Mr.Beer kits vented? I know my Mr.Beer has slots in the top to let the pressure escape and prevent explosions....

sorry to hear about the mess tho :(
 
Not sure where in the kit it told you to add 2 cups of sugar, I couldn't find it in the directions.

http://www.mrbeer.com/product-exec/product_id/124/nm/Strawbeery_Blonde

Edit: Using table sugar to increase ABV is what Mr. Beer might recommend, but it's really not a good option at all. Better off adding a little bit more malt extract or just leaving the recipe where it was.

That excessive amount of sugar caused your fermentation to go nuts, and your vents probably got clogged by strawberry chunks causing the blow-up. Even though your beer may be uncontaminated, I don't think it's going to end up tasting good with all the table sugar added.
 
This thread is useless without photographic evidence of your strawberry explosion. :D
 
Your beer will more than likely be OK. All that sugar will make the beer pretty dry tasting. You might want to check and make sure the vents are not clogged so you don't get another explosion.
 
its in the "brewing with mr. beer" book where it talks about alcohol content. it discusses ways to make your beer stronger.

well that really sucks....i hope it turns out ok.
 
haha ok well ill try to take some before i clean it (or i get forced to clean it)...but i need to find a camera to use :drunk:
 
FYI, this is one of the reasons Mr. Beer isn't all that great of a system. Just enough to get your feet wet, but leave you longing for something much better...more controlled...more reliable.
 
I don't think this really happened....... we need photographic proof!!!! LOL, sorry man, that really sucks. I had rhubarb wine clog the neck of a carboy once. It woke everyone in my house up, but we didn't find out what happened for a few more days after that. Needless to say, it couldn't be cleaned off the ceiling, so we just let it dry for a couple more months and then painted over it. Now I am a certified ceiling texturer, well I say so anyways. My family still talks about that when we bring up fermenting anything.
 
malkore said:
FYI, this is one of the reasons Mr. Beer isn't all that great of a system. Just enough to get your feet wet, but leave you longing for something much better...more controlled...more reliable.

Tis true!

Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.......nanananana na nah (crappy attempt at the bionic man sound bite). Ok, so that is way out there but you can do better than Mr. Beer. :D
 
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