22 oz bottle bomb in my kitchen!

[UnderPressure]

Two weeks ago. 5 pm. I was leaving work when SWMBO calls my cell phone. She was enjoying an evening nap (she works nights) when she was awakened by an extremely loud and unusual noise from the kitchen. "This can't be good, I thought." She calmly tells me "One of your beer bottles exploded in the kitchen." Her grogginess made me think she was joking, as she usually is not the type to remain cool during a crisis. "There's glass everywhere." She wasn't joking. All the way home I pondered the issue. You must use LESS priming sugar for 22 oz bottles, right? (Not according to the research I've done.) Anyway, when I get home, the mess is cleaned, the wife is calm, all is cool. So I carefully move all 40-something bottles of my RyePA to a large, sealed rubbermaid container and hope.

It's been two weeks and none of the other bottles have exploded. I've been drinking the beer all along and every single bottle is WAY over carbonated. I'll pour half of a nicely chilled beer as slowly and carefully as I can down the side of the glass and end up with 10% liquid, 90% head. Meanwhile, the remaining half is foaming in the bottle. This debunks my theory that I didn't stir up the priming sugar in my bottling bucket.

The beer was in the primary for two weeks. Secondary for two weeks. The final gravity had stabilized. (I can't recall the specific number.) But I will tell you, I never took an OG reading (I forgot). And I used the "satellite fermentation method". I collected a sample while racking to secondary, kept it in an unsealed beer bottle, and used that to make my readings. The priming sugar I used was a pre packaged amount 5oz of corn sugar. So I know I didn't use too much. I guess it had not completed fermentation, even though the gravity appeared to had stabilized.

 

[Andy_LV]

bottle might had some hidden defect - like stressed glass or microscopic fracture.

 

[IrregularPulse]

How does the beer taste? Could be an infection. And I don't think I ever used the full 5oz of priming sugar, but I haven't bottled for a long time so I could be mistaken.

 

[UnderPressure]

That's true, but every other beer had a ridiculous amount of carbonation.

 

[UnderPressure]

How does the beer taste? Could be an infection. And I don't think I ever used the full 5oz of priming sugar, but I haven't bottled for a long time so I could be mistaken.

The beer tastes fine to me, but I'm still a beginner. So, maybe I'm not picking it up.

 

[mosquitocontrol]

Could just be that you lost a little extra during all the racking so you ended with less then 5 gallons. That would screw up the amount of priming sugar needed for sure. How many bottles did you have?

That's one reason why I like kegging much better. Seemed I would used prescribed priming sugar, but due to different losses during racking about a third of my batches would end up overcarbed. If you put priming sugar in before you rack, its difficult to estimate how much you will lose from trub during racking.

 

[UnderPressure]

Good point I'm not sure. 40 something bottles. I ended up with between 4.5 and 5 gallons.

 

[UnderPressure]

That's before racking

 

[Strave19]

Wierd, 5oz is definitely on the high end for a 5gallon batch, but shouldnt lead to carbination like you are describing I dont think... Most I've used so far is 4.5oz for a belgian pale but its not overcarbed. What was the temperature of the beer at bottling? If it was cooler you may have already had a lot of dissolved CO2 in the beer... and 5oz sugar brought it into the realm of over carbonated. Just an Idea... Maybe that combined with only coming up with 4.5 gallons or so... that 1/2 gallon makes a difference. Even at 3 volumes (which you may have gotten with 4.5gallons bottling at 60 or cooler) you should not be having gushers I wouldnt think??? Maybe an infection after all?

 

[UnderPressure]

I bottled at around 75 degrees F.

 

[UnderPressure]

Yeah, could be an infection. But I'm drinking it. And I'm trying to get rid of it pretty quick.

 

[IceFisherChris]

A couple things come to find. The first being that it is fairly easy to crack the neck of a bottle using a capper. I've seen this happen three times. Usually you don't notice it until you try uncapping the bottle and the top of the neck breaks off...
Also you usually don't need to use the full 5 ounces (depending on your style of beer.) Most beer tends to be overcarbonated (but it shouldn't blow up a bottle.) Did you fully dissolve with water and mix with your beer? If it was dissolved, you could have picked up sugar crystals into a bottle. And if it's not mixed well, then that could give you problems. Don't be scarred to stir your beer, too many people are. You won't "oxygenate it" or make it turn bad.

 

[UnderPressure]

I boiled the sugar with 16 oz of water. Pretty sure it was fully dissolved, but it's possible it wasn't.

 

[NorCalAngler]

How long has it been in the bottle? - Excessive foam can indicate the CO2 hasn't settled into solution yet and the bottles need longer to stabilize.

How long are you chilling them before drinking them? You need to chill for AT LEAST 4+ hours and not try to flash chill in the freezer. It takes a while for the CO2 in the head space to settle into solution as the beer chills.

I would guess this is a combination of things including too much priming sugar, a possible infection and immature conditioning.

 

[prosper]

was it temperature controlled during primary? If not, temperature fluctuations can cause the yeast to go inactive prematurely, and cause the gravity to stabilize - only to wake up weeks or months later and take a few more gravity points off. Adding priming sugar may have been the kick-start that the yeast needed.

 

[TenaciousJ]

Sorry for the explosion... am I the only one cracking up about the irony of UnderPressure facing this dilemma?

I'm not expert (and a beginner too) but it sounds like a fluke like Andy LV suggests.

 

[UnderPressure]

Yeah, the screen name seems to fit. Haha!
NorCalAngler- I've drank most of the beer already. Some have been flash frozen, some have been refrigerated for days, some have been room temperature. All have been overcarbed.
Proper- the fermenter was located in my air conditioned converted garage-room The temperature stayed at around 76 degrees F.

 

[nordoe]

How bad was the damage? I have heard some pretty bad stories on the forums. I am concerned about my sparkling cider. I want to put it in bottles early to stop fermentation before it drys out and then carbonate and pasteurize. But I am affraid of an explosion between the time I bottle and carbonation is complete. I will have to wear goggles and a hard hat.

 

[JetSmooth]

I don't think bottling stops fermentation. Bottle too early and you can pretty much give yourself a 50/50 chance at bottle bombs. You have to KILL the yeast or make the sugars undigestible.

 

[Andy_LV]

A couple things come to find. The first being that it is fairly easy to crack the neck of a bottle using a capper. I've seen this happen three times. Usually you don't notice it until you try uncapping the bottle and the top of the neck breaks off...
Also you usually don't need to use the full 5 ounces (depending on your style of beer.) Most beer tends to be overcarbonated (but it shouldn't blow up a bottle.) Did you fully dissolve with water and mix with your beer? If it was dissolved, you could have picked up sugar crystals into a bottle. And if it's not mixed well, then that could give you problems. Don't be scarred to stir your beer, too many people are. You won't "oxygenate it" or make it turn bad.

+1
had same problem - after week one of the bottles had a nasty crack near the neck - thats one out of 46 bottles. Tho it still held pressure.

Glass gets tired - you bump it, cling it and you dont know how it was transported and sometimes this causes some microscopic fractures which will give in under pressure especially if there was a tension in the glass to begin with.

Trust your taste and dont panic! As for signs of infection - if this was your first brew, I bet you were paranoid about sanitation, I would not place my bet on infection. Oh, and you dont have to be pro to taste something fishy in the beer.

P.S.
if you can, try store it someplace cool.

 

[UnderPressure]

The damage was relatively not bad, as it was a single bottle that exploded. But the shards were everywhere. If you do have a bomb, be sure to thoroughly clean up. I stepped on a piece of glass a couple days later. It was about the size of a grain of rice, and it hurt like a S.O.B.

 

[XxonValdez]

The "satellite fermentation method" is notoriously bad at predicting final SG, more than not the satellite will finish out ahead actual fermenter which likely lead to your problem of over-carbonation, there is a lot of microbiology/chemistry that goes into explaining why 5 gallons takes longer to ferment than the small satellite that I wont go into, do a search you will see most don't use this method as it tends to be hit or miss (more often miss), it is OK to use if you want to have a ROUGH idea of what the SG may be during fermentation but I would never use that reading and assume it is the same in the fermenter, especially if bottling. Just sanitize a turkey baster suck some beer out of the carboy and take a reading, all will be well.

 

[UnderPressure]

Great advice XxonValdez. I just assumed I was OK since I had 2 weeks primary, 2 weeks secondary. (that, and the satellite fermenter reading)... That sparks an idea. Can I open a beer now, let it go flat and compare that gravity to what I had in the satellite? You know, to see if the batch kept fermenting?

 

[BioBeing]

I had a batch of Amber that stuck at 1.020 recently. i tried rousing the yeast, raising the temp - everything - but it was still stuck, and stable for over a week, so I went ahead and bottled one half (5 gallons). Ran out of time and bottled the second bucket a couple of weeks later - by which point the gravity had finally dropped another 5 or 6 points. The stuff that I bottled at 1.020 is highly over carbed and I got a couple of bombs from. The stuff I bottled later is perfectly carbed (IIRC I used 3.6 oz of sugar), and no bombs.

So my money would be on incomplete fermentation, coupled with a the high end amount of priming sugar.

 

[XxonValdez]

Great advice XxonValdez. I just assumed I was OK since I had 2 weeks primary, 2 weeks secondary. (that, and the satellite fermenter reading)... That sparks an idea. Can I open a beer now, let it go flat and compare that gravity to what I had in the satellite? You know, to see if the batch kept fermenting?

It is worth a shot if you want to trouble shoot, but don't forget the priming sugar will add to the SG, I forget how much but I think it is only a point or 2, of course depending on how much you added, there is a formula to figure it out if you really want to nail it down. Also most keep the beer in the primary for at least 3 weeks before moving to a secondary which may have also lead to a stuck fermentation if your primary fermentation had not finished. Also check out threads about not using a secondary which I prefer, unless you are racking onto fruit or other adjuncts.

 

[boostsr20]

Next time go three weeks in primary and 1 in secondary. What was the recipe? Did it use any honey?

 

[nordoe]

@underpressure

How long was it from the time you bottled until the explosion?

 

[nickmv]

There's a lot of factors that go into carbonation levels:

1. Temp @ fermentation time --> the lower, the more CO2 still in solution
2. Fluid loss during fermentation --> affects ratio of beer: priming sugar
3. Under-attenuation --> the beer could have possibly not been ready or stalled


Those are the main reasons. If I had to guess, it's #3 possibly combined with #2

 

[UnderPressure]

Boostr20 - no honey. Just grains, extract, water, hops and yeast.
Nordoe - I don't remember the exact amount of time, but it was probably around 4 days.

 

[UnderPressure]

Double post

 

[nordoe]

Boostr20 - no honey. Just grains, extract, water, hops and yeast.
Nordoe - I don't remember the exact amount of time, but it was probably around 4 days.

Wow, that is quick. Now I may get worried.