Suspected Infection Bottle Bomb with Pics

My second brew ever, its a Sam Smith Oatmeal Stout clone, partial grain extract. Left it in the primary for two weeks, the racked to the bottling bucket and bottled. Looked great, smelled great, tasted great.
First mistake: stored about a case in my bedroom closet. This is 9 days after bottling, I go into the closet this afternoon and smell beer. Find that one bottle has exploded. Carefully take the bottles off the shelf and place in a black plastic bag in a large plastic tub. I look through them (wearing leather gloves and safety glasses) and find that two bottles have a white foam at the top. The rest of the batch looks ok. So here's the sort of funny part. I decide to open these two bottles. The first one had partial foam, I open it and SPEWWW! All over the counter, sink, etc. At least I had it in the sink. The second bottle had a lot of white foam. I'm thinking I have to open this fast so it doesn't spew like the first one. I pulled that opener and BOOM! it sounded like a gun went off! The opener recoiled into my hand and I thought I had just lost a finger! Luckily no, but my heart rate is still elevated! I ran like a scalded dog!

After I had bottled I thought about my priming sugar, which I added first to the bottling bucket to let the beer naturally mix it as it flowed in from the fermenter. I think my plastic hose floated up a little from the bottom and I had planned to go back and stir just a bit but forgot.

So I am thinking I had an isolated infection in 3 bottles, the rest should be fine. Or, is there a chance these 3 bottles were actually the first ones drawn in the bottling process and actually had an inordinate amount of priming sugar, and I will find that the rest of my batch has a non-uniform amount, meaning I may have a few non carbed beers.

Open to any and all comments. Thanks :cross:

 

Pics. You can see the white foam in one of the bottles.

 

How much sugar and did it reach final gravity? Was it stable for 3 consecutive days at that gravity?

 

Hi

Did you mix the sugar with some water and boil it before you put it in the bucket? From your description it sounds like you powder in the bottling bucket.

Bob

 

Mixed the sugar (5 oz. corn sugar) with a cup of water and boiled it for 5 minutes before adding to the bottling bucket. The OG according to the kit was 1.048, I don't have a hydrometer. Don't know if it was stable for 3 days.

 

You know i have always wondered about this. I usually give a few stirs with a sanitized spoon to ensure that the priming sugar gets mixed up, but most people will say that this is unnecessary and that the racking movement sufficiently mixes it...

Let us all know how it turns out, i am really curious.

 

sounds like a classic case of bottle-bombs due to over-carb. 2 weeks just ain't enough for an oatmeal stout. i've had them pop for a month.

 

Yeah, sounds like it may not have been done fermenting. Did you taste it before you bottled? Was it slightly sweet? I would pop one or two more to check them, or maybe even put them in the fridge so others dont blow.

I would aslo invest in a hydrometer, they really are necessary.

 

Update: opened a few bottles this weekend. Very little carbonation. So I think the sugar just didn't mix well. Lesson here is stir it to be sure.