Bottle bomb

[MicheleE63]

I have about 25 batches brewed so far, about half are bottled and half kegged, so I'm still fairly new to brewing. Maybe one of the experts on the forum can give me some answers. I went on vacation and returned to my first bottle bomb. I store my bottles in my basement on shelving in a cool, dark area of my basement. It looks like 1 bottle of a Whiskey Barrel Stout blew while I was gone. It didn't take any others out, but sure made a mess. I've been reading some possible causes, but I don't see anything I can confirm. I had trouble capping this batch - the caps were sticking in the bell of my new capper - my capper was pulling part of the crimp out when i pulled the bottle away from the bell. I realized the seal wasn't good on some of them when I was labeling them about a week after bottling. About half leaked when I laid them in their sides to stick the label on. So I got out my wing capper and crimped them again, hoping this would save those bottles. I haven't had any issues with them, and the ones I've opened since then have been fine. Could this have caused the bomb?

 

[RM-MN]

Bottle bombs have 4 causes.
1. The beer wasn't done fermenting when bottled and continued to ferment the residual sugars plus the priming sugars. That would give you lots of gushers and an occasional bottle bomb. If you don't have gushers, this isn't likely.
2. Mistake in measuring/weighing priming sugar or bad mixing. This also should lead to gushers for part of the bottles and nearly flat in others. Again, if you don't have gushers and/or flat bottles this isn't likely.
3. The yeast you fermented with wasn't the only thing in a bottle. If your bottles weren't clean enough there could have been some wild yeast in one bottle that would cause it to overcarbonate until it burst. I had 2 bottles in one batch do this while the rest were carbonated just fine. I attributed it to bottles that I had given out as samples that hadn't been rinsed immediately and had some dried yeast in the bottom. This yeast is hard to see and harder to scrub out.
4. You didn't sanitize all the bottles or didn't sanitize well enough and one bottle had an infection. Very similar to #3.

 

[Yooper]

Or, just from messing around with the capping like that you caused a weak spot in the glass. Just a thought, since it only happened to that one!

 

[amandabab]

Bottle bombs have 4 causes.
1. The beer wasn't done fermenting when bottled
2. Mistake in measuring/weighing priming sugar or bad mixing. y.
3. The yeast you fermented with wasn't the only thing in a bottle.
4. You didn't sanitize all the bottles or didn't sanitize well enough and one bottle had an infection. Very similar to #3.

#5 crappy thin bottles.
The only bottle bombs I've ever had were all from a six pack of Anchor Steam bottles, the remnants were all really thin,