Opiate42
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Been there done that too. 
Bottled Too Soon? Results Below.
- Thread starter bert_wall
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TheBluePhantom
Brewing for sport
In the 70s I did rootbeer as a kid with my father in glass beer bottles. 4 gallon batch and we found 8 bottles blown one morning. Sticky mess but most went down the floor drain in the basement. We fixed that by using champagne bottles, takes the same cap and holds more pressure.
Fast forward to a few years back, I inherited the cappper and thought it would be fun to do with my kids. Recipe said use wine yeast, carb for 1 to 2 weeks and refrigerate. Still used champagne bottles. After a few seeks in the frige he opened a bottle, and it popped the top so hard it wrapped the cap around the opener and left our ears ringing. Nobody has changed the recipes for decades, but yeast is much better, many wine yeasts will ferment at refrigerator temps. Those bottles shot a 3 to 4 foot fountain, and mostly emptied.
Bottles didn't blow though, guy at the homebrew shop told me that the cap will usually pop before the bottle breaks on those. Judging from the fact the caps were hair trigger, i would guess I was close.
In the end, nobody got hurt, I felt so bad I went and bought a small freezer that would hold 3 kegs, and built a keg system for the soda pop. Then since I had the kegs, and the wine carboys from my father, I decided to try brewing a beer. Now I have a bigger freezer for 10 kegs, and if I want bottles, I pull them off the keg. Not worth hurting the family.
Still use the same capper too, It belonged to my grandfather originally...
Fast forward to a few years back, I inherited the cappper and thought it would be fun to do with my kids. Recipe said use wine yeast, carb for 1 to 2 weeks and refrigerate. Still used champagne bottles. After a few seeks in the frige he opened a bottle, and it popped the top so hard it wrapped the cap around the opener and left our ears ringing. Nobody has changed the recipes for decades, but yeast is much better, many wine yeasts will ferment at refrigerator temps. Those bottles shot a 3 to 4 foot fountain, and mostly emptied.
Bottles didn't blow though, guy at the homebrew shop told me that the cap will usually pop before the bottle breaks on those. Judging from the fact the caps were hair trigger, i would guess I was close.
In the end, nobody got hurt, I felt so bad I went and bought a small freezer that would hold 3 kegs, and built a keg system for the soda pop. Then since I had the kegs, and the wine carboys from my father, I decided to try brewing a beer. Now I have a bigger freezer for 10 kegs, and if I want bottles, I pull them off the keg. Not worth hurting the family.
Still use the same capper too, It belonged to my grandfather originally...
I decided against bottling our rootbeer, ended up spending nearly $200 getting the stuff to keg 4 gal of rootbeer with. I can see how it is possible to yeast carbonate pop, but the end state of where soda is supposed to be and what yeast wants to do are just incongruent.
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