Bottle Bombs or Mother Nature?!?

[GoooonSquad]

This is probably about my 12th batch or so and I've never had problems with bottling.

So we brewed the "Innkeeper" English Ale extract recipe from Northern Brewer. OG was 1.054. There wasn't a target grvity on the recipe, but we figured since we had a stable gravity of 1.010 over a few readings, we were good to bottle it. We used the amount of priming sugar called for in the recipe, bottled in 1 liter and half liter Grolsh style bottles, and stored them in my buddy's pantry. They conditioned for 12 days and we opened one tonight. The little porceline top almost shot my buddy's eye out! It blew right off the top. About a half hour later another one blew, this time the bottom of the bottle. What the hell did we do wrong?

OOOOOOR.... Could this crazy side note have something to do with it:

He popped the first one because we got a severe weather alert on tv and we were going to watch the storm roll in... It turned crazy in a hurry. It dropped 20 degrees and blew some branches down (big ones), all in like 20-30 minutes. It really seemed like we were seeing some real tornado-recipe ****. Anybody know if there's a possibility it was weather related, atmospheric pressure at fault. Or is there something I'm not thinking of?


AND... What do we do next? Advice?

 

[djsethall]

Put them in a tote with a lid so if they do explode, you don't end up with a mess or a piece of glass shrapnel in your eye. Chill them before opening them also. It will lessen the chance of an explosive beer

 

[shortyjacobs]

I love the thinking with atmospheric pressure. Your hypothesis IS well grounded in science. I am not an atmospheric scientist, but some quick googling shows that pressure can drop as low as 800 millibars...(average atmospheric pressure is around 1.013 bar, or 1013 millibars). A 20% drop in pressure, however, doesn't seem like it could cause THAT big of a difference, seeing as carbonation pressure at room temp in a bottle is around 26 PSIG, which is around 40 PSIA, which is around 3000 millibars. So, the bottle is already holding in ~2000 millibars when the weather is nice. When the tornado hits, if you are sitting right underneath the funnel, the bottle now has to hold in 2200 millibars. If the safety margin on the bottles was only a mere 200 millibars, we'd see a LOT more bottle bombs.

I think the cause of your exploding bottles is far more pedestrian - either you screwed up measuring sugar, it wasn't done fermenting, you didn't evenly mix the sugar before bottling, or you got a gusher infection.

A+ for good scientific thinking though!

 

[flabyboy]

did you use all 5 oz that came with the kit? I made this same kit as an all grain and only used 2 oz because I wanted it more carbed to the style. I think my FG dropped to 1.008 before I bottled. I ended up having a well carbonated bottle of beer with 2 oz. I would be safe and put them in a covered tote and then get them cold after another week. Also, I would stay away from using a whole 5 oz priming sugar if thats what you are doing. Check out tastybrew.com and look at their priming calculator. carbing to style is fun

 

[GoooonSquad]

I used ¾ of a cup of corn sugar or whatever the recipe called for (sorry I don’t have it in front of me). Now I’m spooked about infection. I drank the one we opened after the foaming subsided…it wasn’t bad—all be it too warm, but it had sort of an odd aftertaste. My guess was it was still green. I was trying my best to place it as somewhat bright and mineral like. I just hope it’s not the dreaded astringent flavor I have read about and was just trying to fool myself. This morning I checked and thankfully we had no more casualties. I was able to move them to the basement and put them into a washtub sink. When I get home from work I will see if all hell has broken loose or not. I will leave them be for a bit and then chill one, and try again.

For what’s worth, the gusher we did try open was half full…sort of a random left over one which made it the candidate for testing. The liter bottle should have been full though. I will say it seemed really sudsy when it was bottled, which I thought was odd.

I know the weather element was a bit of a reach...but I thought it was worth a shot. I haven't seen a storm like that in a long time and didn't know if it was possible to have an impact on the active science taking place in the bottles

 

[flabyboy]

3/4 of a cup is a lot. Most recipes I read ask for 2/3 cup and that is ~5 oz of sugar. I would get a scale and weigh out your sugar from now on. aiming between 3-4 oz for 5 gallons is pretty typical for most american ales. youll typically use lower levels with your british ales and higher levels for some Belgian and wheat beers

 

[GoooonSquad]

Read you loud and clear--I think it was 2/3 of a cup. Moving forward I will use the digital scale. Thanks for the advice!

 

[malkore]

was the beer REALLY cold at bottling? you might have had more trapped CO2 pre-priming than normal, causing the amount of sugar you used to be 'too much'.

Then again, keep a bottle warm 2 weeks then chill and try it. if that funny taste is there and stronger, its probably an infection.

 

[GoooonSquad]

It was cold yes...but I wouldn't say it was out of the normal range. It's usually much colder in the basement where it was fermented, maybe mid to high 60s? It got to the 90's in the kitchen where they were stored in the bottles. We thought it might have something to do with the storm b/c the temp dropped like 20 or 30 degrees in about 10 minutes after being warm all day. Just a strange coincidence I guess...

On the up-side, we have had no more bombs since the initial incident. I will update when I try another one. Thanks again guys for all the help!

 

[GoooonSquad]

Just an update- No more bombs since the storm. Beer is a bit overcarbed for style, but otherwise shaping up.

Shorty- Love the analysis. I had never heard the word milibars before you post. Thanks for the enlightenment. I'm afraid in my telling of the story, it will always have atmospheric pressure as the villain, though, science be damned!!!

Cheers, fellas. Thanks.