Bottle Conditioning in Hot Weather

I'm sure I'm not alone with this so I was hoping someone had some practices they could share. During the day in this heat, my apt usually gets to up to the low to mid 80s and this is nearing the danger zone for bottle bombs and just not good for the beer. I also have a Berliner weisse and saison coming up that will be highly carbonated so this concerns me even more.

Does anyone have any practices they use to keep bottles at a reasonable temperature? I could also just condition in the fridge but such a low temp would definitely retard the conditioning process.

 

I've used a keg tub filled with water. As long as your caps are tight, you can keep the bottles submerged. And you can add ice to regulate temps.

 

I keep them in sturdy cardboard shipping boxes of various sizes. With the flaps closed,it seems to help hold some coolness from the night before pretty good. Their taste is improving as well,with the o2 absorbing caps.

 

From what I've read on here it is no big deal. My place gets into the 90s during the day when I'm not home. My beers taste just fine. Now obviously I use a swamp cooler when I have a batch fermenting but once its in the bottles I don't think its a big deal.

 

High temps don't really have anything to do with bottle bombs. All it really does is speed up carbonation, and possibly cuts down on the time you can store your beer long term. But since most folks aren't aging most of our beers it doesn't really matter.

 

Don't worry about it at all. Revvy said it best. It will speed up carbing time, but reduce the shelf life of your beer. As long as you don't plan on keeping it for 12+ months, don't worry about it

 

I personally have had other experiences with the high temps. I have only allowed bottles to get into the 80s or 90s on two occasions and both times I had bottle bombs. Thinking about it in terms of the increased heating causing the yeast to act much more rapidly, it seemed logical to me that was the cause.

My question would be to anyone - if heat is not the cause of bottle bombs and is not a factor, what is? I'd like to fix whatever part of the process could be causing this. The only other thing I could think of would be maybe having too much suspended yeast left in the bottle?

 

Bottle bombs are caused by:

-Not letting the beer fully attenuate. The yeast continue to ferment in the bottle.
-Adding too much priming sugar.
-Not thoroughly mixing your priming sugar.
-Extreme high temperatures (i'm talking like 110F and above). Gasses expand as they get hotter, causing bombs in properly carbed bottles.

The yeast won't be 'more active' at higher temps if there is nothing left for them to eat. Now if you are trying to make a beer that is SUPER fizzy, like 3.5-4 vols of C02(wits, saisons, lambics), you might run into some problems around 90F with bottle bombs, but otherwise, it's fine. My house gets up to 85F all the time, and I have about 4 cases of bottle conditioned beer sitting around.

 

IMHO the first three are sure causes for an occasional bottle bomb. The high temp reason does not make sense to me. I would love to hear feed back on the question from folks in AZ, or anywhere else for that matter where the temp gets to 110 with frequency.

 

PV=nRT

Glass bottles aren't that strong. It's supposed to be 113* today. I can leave a bottle in the sun, and take some pictures if you'd like =)

 

Bottles will explode if they get hot. My buddy had a bunch of commercial beer that he left in a car. Made a big mess. Florida gets hot.

BTW, infections cause many, many bottle bombs. Should have been on the list above. Bacteria will slowly consume sugars that yeast didn't and, consequently, blow the bottle. This is why we sanitize our bottles.

 

I would think that the temp had little to do with the bombs. Left alone long enough they would have exploded regardless due to other factors. I've had commercial beers left in my trunk for entire summers (forgot they were there) in the sweltering summer heat and have never had that happen. Just my experience.

 

Thank you =) I know because I've had it happen. Leave a beer in the Phoenix summer sun, and it'll explode, I promise.

 

So if I let my carbed bottles sit in my 110+*F garage for a few weeks, they'll go boom? I'm gonna test this theory, cause I got some nasty homebrew takin up too much space that I wouldn't mind exploding.

 

Depends on carb levels and the type of bottles, but 110F is definately flirting with some bombs. My dad knocked the temp probe out of my ferm chamber while trying to steal a brew one winter and the heater just kept on heating. When I found it the next day the temp in the chamber was up to ~110F and three of the bottles I was conditioning in there had exploded. I've also seen a case of commercial beer explode when a friend left it on his porch in the sun for an afternoon.

 

I'm conditioning my berliner weisse outdoors, 90+F day 80F night. So far no problems.

 

There's a world of difference between "in a car in Summer in Florida" hot and someone's apartment.

In most apartments you can usually find a spot that's shady and gets some ventilation. In a car, a container made of glass and metal which is small enough to get direct sun on most of it in a parking lot.

For the record, when I moved into the home I'm in now I used to stash bottles in the same room as the old and decrepit hot water heater to get them to carb up faster. The room was naturally warmer and it would cut the time in about half.