Bragging rights earned

I have opened a half full 22oz bottle of Dunkel (see sig below) tonight. Cap came up with a nice hiss but when I poured it looked flat. It was a half bottle because I couldn't discard it at the end of the bottling. The taste was too chocolate like for my preferences but with a very nice smoothness to it.
I had to open a full bottle out of curiosity eventhough I intend to save this batch a bit longer in the bottle. I am so glad that I did open one. It is so dark looking but one of the nicest beers I tasted in this style. It appears like a bottle of this make me a "happy" one for the evening. I have had many hobbies I picked up and dropped over the years but I found non other than brewing so satisfying.

 

Sounds yummy! Out of curiosity, were you worried about that half bottle blowing up on you, or did you open that one early on purpose to avoid it? My last batch I was lucky enough that I only had to leave about 1/4" extra headspace in the last bottle to avoid wasting it, but I am curious how much you can safely leave without risking a bottle bomb....

 

Hopefully soemone will correct me if I am wrong; when the bottle is less then "full", it won't explode because there is enough room for CO2 to compress without too much pressure on the cap. In my half bottle, it opened with pretty good lively "hiss" though, beer was flat. My guess is, CO2 couldn't saturate the beer since it had easier route to escape to (larger empty space). Normally filled bottle didn't make as much hiss but beer is well carbonated. If the bottle is filled up to the cap, then it is a different story alltogether. That's what I call a beer bomb if there is enough sugar/yeast in the bottle.

 

Right, bottle bombs occur due to overcarbonation, caused by adding too much priming sugar or bottling beer before it's done fermenting. Leaving extra headspace in the bottle will decrease the chance of bottlebombs as it allows more room for CO2, but it will also cause some undercarbonation of the beer.