Cracking bottles

The bottles from the Red Ale we brewed are showing signs of distress. Fortunately, we love it and are trying our very best to finish it before we have exploding bottles. My first brew seems fine.

What do you think happened? It was from a kit and the FG was supposed to be 19, but was 20. Is that enough of a difference? And, maybe I did it wrong. I don't know. I sure am glad this is good beer, though!

What are these signs of distress you speak of?

Have you checked your hydrometer in water? It's pretty common that they're off. Whatever your correction is to get distilled water (or tap water will be close enough) at whatever temperature your hydrometer is supposed to read 1.000 at will be the same for any other reading.

Just ever so slight cracks are showing up on the sides of the bottles. We are seriously going to try to finish it tonight.

I have not checked the hydrometer like that. I'll do that tomorrow.

Thank you.

.001 difference from planned shouldn't make enough to cause cracking bottles. 1.020 is a bit higher than I like to bottle at, but depending on the recipe could be fine. I bottled my 999 Barleywine at 1.030 'cause the yeast were toast (at 17.5%!!! ) I've noticed that most of the extract kits I've done have finished fairly high, around 1.017-1.020 and no cracked bottles yet.

How hard did you lay on the capper? I have actually cracked the neck of a bottle while capping. I also got a few bad bottles that the neck snapped on when they were opened. The cap stayed attached and there was a very even break all the way around the neck. I really hated pouring those beers down the drain, but didn't want to chance that glass had gotten into them.

Terje

We DID have some of the caps cracking off. I think my husband may have taken it too far by 'double crimping' them.