Flying with bottled beer

Howdy. I'm new to the hobby/obsession and I've learned a lot here. Cheers.

My first batch (ESB, extract kit from MoreBeer) has been in the primary for 8 days now. I'm flying to California in 3 weeks for my daughter's wedding and some friends have been following my brewing saga and they've asked me to bring a few bottles to sample. I don't plant to bottle it until right before I leave and I'm worried about packing a bunch of bottle-conditioning beers in my checked baggage. I'm sure I can pack them to avoid making a mess if they break, but the combination of carbonating beer that's under pressure and below-normal (I assume) air pressure in the plane's hold have me a little worried. Has anyone done this before? I've flown with commercially bottled beers before, but never a science experiment like the one I'm conducting in my bathtub at the moment. I have nightmarish visions of exploding bottles, panicked TSA inspectors and 5 years in Gitmo running through my mind.

Brewed my second batch (American IPA kit from MoreBeer) with Safale-S04 last night and it's going crazy in my fermentation chiller (bathtub) at the moment. It's in a 6-gallon Better Bottle and I had to fashion an emergency blow-off tube after hearing strange sounds coming from the bathroom a few hours ago. The ESB was active, but this guy is going crazy.

The second batch went much more smoothly than the first. The ESB took nearly 2 hours to cool with an immersion chiller because the tap water here in south Texas isn't very cold. It was painful watching all that perfectly good water going down my kitchen sink, so this time I purchased a few hose adapters at Home Depot and connected the return line to a sprinkler in my garden. Now I can water my veggies and cool my wort at the same time.

I also froze a case of 16-ounce bottles of water and chucked them in a Rubbermaid tub that I then placed the 8-gallon kettle into after boiling. It ate through most of the bottles quickly, but I got the temperature down to 70 degrees in about 30 minutes. I'm continuing to re-freeze the bottles and drop them into my bathtub (3 every couple of hours) and now my water+T-shirt cooling system is able to keep the carboys at a steady 64-66 degrees in a 78-degree room. Without the ice bottles I had difficulty maintaining 72 degrees while the ESB was fermenting.

Thanks for all the good advice!

 

i would suggest shipping them via ground through the mail.

 

I flew from Brussels to NYC to Richmond with a suitcase full of various beers. Most were highly carbonated...3 volumes or more is my guess. I didn't have a single issue. I will say that all but 4 of the bottles were corked though. Why would you think that the pressure during conditioning would be greater than when it's done? You should be fine as long as you cap them well and don't overshoot your priming sugar. As long as you've got that right your conditioning pressure should never exceed the finished pressure and it should travel just fine in the belly of a plane.

 

I don't, but my experience has only been with commercial beers and I've never bottle one myself. I assume I'm at greater risk of over-carbonating a beer than an experienced brewer.

I guess I can mail it, but that takes away from the thrill of smuggling untaxed alcoholic beverages across state lines.

 

If there was a total vacuum in the baggage hold (there isn't, you aren't going via spaceship, are you?), then you are talking about an additional 16 pounds of pressure (psi) being exerted on the inside of the bottle. since you are flying lower than 40,000 feet (prolly lower than 30,000), you're talking half that pressure differential. Maybe 5 - 8 extra pounds of force.

No problem, man... that is what, 50% more pressure than you have at a low carb level? I don't predict a problem.

 

If you are bottling right before you fly there is no way your beer will be carbonated enought to drink at the wedding. (I am assuming you are not flying there 3 weeks ahead of time.)

 

For the flight problem If I were you I would bottle them next week and let them sit in bottles for two weeks. So you know for sure you will not have a green beer and also you wont have exploding bottles on the plane.

 

Sounds like a good idea. I'm not really looking to serve the beer at the wedding; I just thought it would be easy to hand out samples to beer-loving friends and family when they're all gathered in one place. Everyone lives in different states, so mailing would be too much of a chore.

 

you will be fine checking it. Just ensure they don't hit eachother and break. They won't explode from the pressure.

 

Yea but what if he has one of those cases where his bottles exploade or caps pop off due to over carbing or fermentation not complete...

IMO its best to be safe and therefore instead of them drinking a green beer they can have a finished beer and say "hey I like this it tastes good"

 

You sure you aren't going to kill your veggies with that hot water?

 

I let the first blast of hot water run off into the grass and then connected the sprinkler. The remaining water wasn't all that hot.

 

The airplane will most certainly be above 30,000' but the cabin will be between 3,000-4,000' most likely. My concerns would be breakage due to your bag being thrown around or your beer going home with some lucky TSA individual(or more likely enjoyed on one of their breaks). But, I'd be more concerned with the long hot ground transportation that it would endure if you shipped it ground from S. Texas to Cali.

 

Bringing bottles into the cabin is impossible (or, should I say, just stupid to try). Bottles of liquid are contraband... must be checked. The cabin, indeed, will be pressurized, but your bottles will have to remain in your checked baggage to keep you out of jail (at worst) and your bottles out of the hands of the TSA (at best). Baggage compartments are rarely pressurized below 10,000 feet, if at all.

 

Flew from IL to CO with a 6 pack of crown-capped longnecks in checked luggage. Nothing unusual to report. They arrived there in great shape. I did pack them in gallon ziploc bags, as insurance, although I'm sure if one of them had popped, the bag would never have held.