OK so today I noticed that one of my 22oz bottles had exploded so I opened some more bottles to see if they were under excessive pressure.
It looks like they were (video stops at 1 minute, but foaming continued for over 5 minutes):
Bottle after bottle was the same:
Now, here's the thing. I bottled this beer (an ESB) on August 13, 2011. The brew day was July 13. It was a 5.5 gallon batch and I added only 1oz of priming sugar. My opening gravity was 1.049 and my final gravity was 1.013.
I then opened a random bottle from two other batches that had been in the bottle for a good couple of months - the same thing happened - a bottle fountain. Again, a couple of weeks ago there was no excessive carbonation.
All the beers that are producing fountains taste fine, so I don't think there's an infection at play here. Furthermore, I bottled the 5.5 gallons of ESB with only 1oz of priming sugar, and it had a month in the fermenter before bottling.
The only explanation I can think of is we recently switched the heating back on in the house. As a result, the temperature in the room where the beers are stored went to an average of 70 degrees F, probably from a previous average of mid to low 60s. Could this have reawakened the yeast? I would have thought that regardless of temperature, there wouldn't be enough sugar for the yeast to feed on to build up such a high amount of pressure?
Any ideas what could be behind this?
It looks like they were (video stops at 1 minute, but foaming continued for over 5 minutes):
Bottle after bottle was the same:
Now, here's the thing. I bottled this beer (an ESB) on August 13, 2011. The brew day was July 13. It was a 5.5 gallon batch and I added only 1oz of priming sugar. My opening gravity was 1.049 and my final gravity was 1.013.
I then opened a random bottle from two other batches that had been in the bottle for a good couple of months - the same thing happened - a bottle fountain. Again, a couple of weeks ago there was no excessive carbonation.
All the beers that are producing fountains taste fine, so I don't think there's an infection at play here. Furthermore, I bottled the 5.5 gallons of ESB with only 1oz of priming sugar, and it had a month in the fermenter before bottling.
The only explanation I can think of is we recently switched the heating back on in the house. As a result, the temperature in the room where the beers are stored went to an average of 70 degrees F, probably from a previous average of mid to low 60s. Could this have reawakened the yeast? I would have thought that regardless of temperature, there wouldn't be enough sugar for the yeast to feed on to build up such a high amount of pressure?
Any ideas what could be behind this?
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