So I have been home brewing off and on since 2008. I made a rookie mistake and bottled before fermentation was complete. I made this discovery while working in my office, hearing a resonating BOOM and immediately rushing to make sure someone hadn't broke in and thrown cherry bombs in my toilet or something. Then the creeping horror of "MY BEER" stole over me and I rushed downstairs to the basement. Growler had exploded. Weird too, it went off like a shaped charge - shrapnel all went towards the wall. I want to say "Must have been a defective growler" but the amount of yeast in there tells me I screwed up bigtime. I ran the hell out of there because, you know, I like my face unshredded even if it isn't handsome.
So donning a welding mask, affixing a handle to a heavy duty plastic bin for a body shield, I headed back down to grab a 12oz capped bottle and a 16 oz. swing top to bring outside and test. Swing top gushed massively. Capped brown bottle was carbonated. I just bottled these Monday afternoon (yeah, Halloween).
The next hour was spent carefully transferring 54 alternating bottles outside into a sturdy plastic bin. For your amusement I present this picture: sweating, several protective layers, welding mask, heavy duty cooler transporting 8 bottles at a time. We have free range chickens and a really stupid ****ing rooster. Rooster spots me, must be thinking "MONSTER. WILL EAT HENS. ATTACK." So included in this mess is me shielding a box of potential bottle bombs from an insane rooster who really hates the welding mask because several kicks into the air don't dissuade the bastard until I put the cooler down, grab a stick and chase the son of a ***** back into the woods. Laugh if you will, someone needs to.
So now I have a bunch of bottles of Bavarian Hefeweisen sitting outside in a sturdy plastic bin, weighted down with some weights so if they go off in rapid succession... I dunno. There's a weight on them. It makes me feel better.
My long-winded, winding question is this: do I A) leave them there to explode in relative safety, B) try to salvage them somehow (assuming there is a safe way with which I am comfortable to do this that hours of combing the Internet refused to give up for me), C) dispose of them somehow (I can't bring them to my recycling dumpsters because, you know. Kind of a dick move).
Or any other advice.
Always take a gravity read. No Thanksgiving homebrew for me.
So donning a welding mask, affixing a handle to a heavy duty plastic bin for a body shield, I headed back down to grab a 12oz capped bottle and a 16 oz. swing top to bring outside and test. Swing top gushed massively. Capped brown bottle was carbonated. I just bottled these Monday afternoon (yeah, Halloween).
The next hour was spent carefully transferring 54 alternating bottles outside into a sturdy plastic bin. For your amusement I present this picture: sweating, several protective layers, welding mask, heavy duty cooler transporting 8 bottles at a time. We have free range chickens and a really stupid ****ing rooster. Rooster spots me, must be thinking "MONSTER. WILL EAT HENS. ATTACK." So included in this mess is me shielding a box of potential bottle bombs from an insane rooster who really hates the welding mask because several kicks into the air don't dissuade the bastard until I put the cooler down, grab a stick and chase the son of a ***** back into the woods. Laugh if you will, someone needs to.
So now I have a bunch of bottles of Bavarian Hefeweisen sitting outside in a sturdy plastic bin, weighted down with some weights so if they go off in rapid succession... I dunno. There's a weight on them. It makes me feel better.
My long-winded, winding question is this: do I A) leave them there to explode in relative safety, B) try to salvage them somehow (assuming there is a safe way with which I am comfortable to do this that hours of combing the Internet refused to give up for me), C) dispose of them somehow (I can't bring them to my recycling dumpsters because, you know. Kind of a dick move).
Or any other advice.
Always take a gravity read. No Thanksgiving homebrew for me.