Exploding bottles

I made it through my first batch of brew without any explosions. However, on the 2nd round of bottling I had two bottles break. I brewed a Paulaner Hefe clone and the yield was 48 bottles (er, now 46). I have read about exploding bottles and that if you use too much priming sugar it can cause explosions. The clone was a kit and I used the amount of sugar that was provided in the kit. In fact I was a little concerned that not enough primer made it into the bottles because when I emptied my bottling bucket there was some priming mixture stuck on the bottom of the bucket.

Another potential cause could have been that I mistakenly but the grains directly into my brew kettle as opposed to steeping them. Prior to bottling I tasted the brew and it tasted right on so I commenced to bottling.

Any idea on what could have caused the explosion and should I expect more broken bottles with this batch. The brew has been conditioning in the bottles for 1 week now.

Thanks

I'm going to go ahead and guess that you didn't have an even amount of priming sugar in each bottle. Generally what I do is boil up a few cups of water and mix the priming sugar in with that, then pour this liquid (after it cools a bit) into the bottling bucket. I then rack the beer into the bottling bucket on top of this sugar water, and gently stir it with my big spoon until it's all mixed together. You really need to make sure all the sugar is dissolved and spread evenly throughout the beer so the bottles carb evenly. My bet is if all the sugar wasn't dissolved, you had a lot of sugar in the last few bottles, so that's probably why they exploded.

Thanks for the reply. I had a feeling that may be the case. I mixed the priming sugar with some water and boiled it. I made my mistake when I poured the mixture into the bucket while it was still warm (dumb!). Hence the sticking to the bucket. Well I will never make that mistake again. Should I be concerned that my other bottles did not get enough sugar?

I don't bother cooling my syrup, I just toss it into the bucket as soon as I take it off the burner and start racking immediately so I doubt that is your problem. I've bottled about 100 batches and the only bottle that ever broke turned out to be defective.

How long did you ferment and what was the FG before you bottled?

It's quite possible your beer was not finished fermenting - what was the specific gravity when you bottled?

The specific gravity at bottling was 1.012. The brew was in the fermenter for two weeks. So far so good, it's been a day and a half since the mishap and no additional broken bottles.