Carbonation bombs armed and triggered to blow

[Frosty Wort]

Everytime I open a bottle from my last batch, it's like sticking a Mentos into a liter of Coke. I've got to do it in the sink or I'm going to have a mess all over the place. In addition, almost half the beer in the bottle usually goes down the drain in the form of foam.

No off flavors or smells detected yet. I think I have some ideas what happened, but I'd like get you all to weigh in on it.

I actually made two batches, both for a homebrew competition.

First batch included combination of mash and extract, and adding 24 oz of molasses after boil. It was in primary for 9 days and secondary for 13 days. One cup maple syrup and 3/4 cup priming sugar added at bottling.

I thought I had screwed up and contaminated the first batch during racking. So, I rushed to make another batch before the competition deadline. It was essentially the same except there was a single substitution in the grain list because LHBS ran out. I added molasses, maple syrup, and priming sugar as before. It was in primary for 9 days and secondary or 6 days (essentially half the total time), and my hydrometer readings were all wackadoodle compared to the first batch. I had no choice to start bottling the batch before the entry deadline.

First batch's bottles have good carbonation and awesome head, but no foam gushers.

Was it mistake to add priming sugar and maple syrup at bottling?

Or, should I have just let the second batch stay in the secondary longer?

And, is there anything I can do to mitigate the gushing when I open the bottles? Or should I just resign myself to have a mop handy?

Thanks all

 

[beermanpete]

It sounds like you may have simply bottled the second batch before it was finished fermenting. What was the grain substitution? "All wackadoodle" is a bit vague with regard to the hydrometer readings. If you captured the data from the hydrometer readings sharing it will help with the diagnostics.

 

[Frosty Wort]

Substitution was 1# chocolate malt in the second batch for 1# roasted barley in the first batch.

I didn't include readings because I initially thought I misread the hydrometer. From my notes: First batch 1.340-1.20, second batch 1.20-1.14

 

[kh54s10]

Your gravity readings don't seem right. I would guess you mean 1.034 - 1.020 for the first one. and 1.020 - 1.014 for the second.
These don't make much sense. If it was 1.340 you would have had to have used a massive amount of grain or extract. And it is unlikely your yeast could have fermented it.
If it was 1.034 that is pretty low gravity and your final gravity should have been much lower 1.008 or there about. 1.034 to 1.020 is only about 40% attenuation. You should get at least 70%

For the gushers, be very careful. A little more buildup in carbonation and the bottles could explode.

Put the bottles in a plastic storage box and get them in the fridge. That may help.

Otherwise I would try to open just a tiny bit to release pressure. If you can't do that without them spraying all over the place I would open them and pour them out. You don't want to have one explode in your hand... or face.

 

[doug293cz]

Please DON'T submit any of those bottles to a competition. They are dangerous. You don't want to be exposing others to potential bottle explosions.

Brew on

 

[stz]

While there are loads of other aspects to look at here first off either vent and reseal (if possible), dump or if you've been opening them warm and it isn't *THAT* bad chill those bottles to both slow further fermentation and help with the pours.

Specific gravity is a measure of relative density. What we always call a hydrometer is a saccharometer calibrated for sugars in water. You can think of it as a percentage or ratio. 1.1 is the same as 10% which for beer is why 1.1 is really quite high. More often we are talking about 1.010 which unhelpfully we'll coequally refer to as ten because we work to a scale that is useful in the range of those last two digits. A recipe quoting a starting gravity of 68, and a final gravity of 14 is actually 1.068 to 1.014. Fortunately I don't know many pedants who start saying "sixty eight to fourteen? Do you literally mean one point six eight or one point zero six eight *snort!*".

I apologise if I've just patronised the fak out of you, just going on low post count, bottle bombs etc. Hope it helps! It is also part of a mission to stop people claiming beer finishing at 10 is fine, but at 14 is too cloying, thick, sweet etc. It is very rare somebody can reliably taste the difference between 4% of a polysaccharide 15 times less sweet than sugar.

On your beer irrespective of recipe changes assuming you didn't actually produce a wort with a starting gravity of 340 or 200 (sugar is 375L°/kg, base malt 300ish L°/kg) and assuming a healthy fermentation you have had enough time for it to finish. That is no indication that it did finish however and your readings don't help out, they just make it all the more confusing.

What was the recipe? How much extract did you add? What were the volumes? How much sugar is REALLY in 24oz of molasses? Did you really make a beer with an sg of 340??! Why did you prime like that? (you REALLY need to calculate fermentables added at that point accurately).

 

[RM-MN]

Everytime I open a bottle from my last batch, it's like sticking a Mentos into a liter of Coke. I've got to do it in the sink or I'm going to have a mess all over the place. In addition, almost half the beer in the bottle usually goes down the drain in the form of foam.

No off flavors or smells detected yet. I think I have some ideas what happened, but I'd like get you all to weigh in on it.

I actually made two batches, both for a homebrew competition.

First batch included combination of mash and extract, and adding 24 oz of molasses after boil. It was in primary for 9 days and secondary for 13 days. One cup maple syrup and 3/4 cup priming sugar added at bottling.

I thought I had screwed up and contaminated the first batch during racking. So, I rushed to make another batch before the competition deadline. It was essentially the same except there was a single substitution in the grain list because LHBS ran out. I added molasses, maple syrup, and priming sugar as before. It was in primary for 9 days and secondary or 6 days (essentially half the total time), and my hydrometer readings were all wackadoodle compared to the first batch. I had no choice to start bottling the batch before the entry deadline.

First batch's bottles have good carbonation and awesome head, but no foam gushers.

Was it mistake to add priming sugar and maple syrup at bottling?

Or, should I have just let the second batch stay in the secondary longer?

And, is there anything I can do to mitigate the gushing when I open the bottles? Or should I just resign myself to have a mop handy?

Thanks all

Maple syrup is mostly sugar. It could be enough to carbonate the bottles by itself. Adding priming sugar is doubling the priming. Unless your batch size is 10 gallons you have a serious problem.

 

[Kharnynb]

how big a batch was this?
if this is a 5 gallon batch, you basically have so much priming "sugar" in there due to the maple syrup that you are going to be around 6-8 volumes of co2

 

[RM-MN]

how big a batch was this?
if this is a 5 gallon batch, you basically have so much priming "sugar" in there due to the maple syrup that you are going to be around 6-8 volumes of co2

I don't think so. I think the bottles will blow apart first.

 

[kh54s10]

I don't think so. I think the bottles will blow apart first.

Agreed, the bottles would not make it to 6-8 volumes. So when containment is breached, it will end up that there are 0 volumes.

 

[Lefou]

Sometimes a beer with a moderate SG that gets under-pitched with yeast doesn't ferment down properly. It can happen when you ferment at the low end of a yeast's range and the process doesn't finish, so the added priming sugar aggravates the situation.
Never had explosions from under-fermented, over carbed beers, but have had well-capped weak bottles expire without explosive consequences.

 

[doug293cz]

...

Specific gravity is a measure of relative density. What we always call a hydrometer is a saccharometer calibrated for sugars in water. You can think of it as a percentage or ratio. 1.1 is the same as 10% which for beer is why 1.1 is really quite high. ...

Most hydrometers used by homebrewers are calibrated in Specific Gravity units, typically 0.990 up to 1.150 - 1.170 (some have more limited scales for higher sensitivity.) These devices read specific gravity, totally independent of whatever solutes are in solution. Specific gravity can be converted to sugar content by using a conversion equation. Some hydrometers are calibrated in °Plato (or °Brix or °Balling). These scales represent the equivalent Weight% sucrose in water solution. Dissolved extract in wort actually has very little sucrose, but the errors in assuming sucrose are small. If the hydrometer scale reads °Plato, then the scale has the conversion equation from SG to Wt% sucrose built into it. Just to confuse things, you will sometimes find other scales on hydrometers, and it is best to ignore them (unless you really know what you are doing.)

An SG of 1.1 is not 10% extract, but closer to 25% extract. 1.010 is about 2.5% extract, and 1.040 is about 10% extract. Extract is the dissolved material in wort. It is about 90% sugars (glucose, fructose, maltose, sucrose, and various larger poly-saccharides), plus proteins, and other minor components.

Brew on

 

[stz]

Most hydrometers used by homebrewers are calibrated in Specific Gravity units, typically 0.990 up to 1.150 - 1.170 (some have more limited scales for higher sensitivity.) These devices read specific gravity, totally independent of whatever solutes are in solution. Specific gravity can be converted to sugar content by using a conversion equation. Some hydrometers are calibrated in °Plato (or °Brix or °Balling). These scales represent the equivalent Weight% sucrose in water solution. Dissolved extract in wort actually has very little sucrose, but the errors in assuming sucrose are small. If the hydrometer scale reads °Plato, then the scale has the conversion equation from SG to Wt% sucrose built into it. Just to confuse things, you will sometimes find other scales on hydrometers, and it is best to ignore them (unless you really know what you are doing.)

An SG of 1.1 is not 10% extract, but closer to 25% extract. 1.010 is about 2.5% extract, and 1.040 is about 10% extract. Extract is the dissolved material in wort. It is about 90% sugars (glucose, fructose, maltose, sucrose, and various larger poly-saccharides), plus proteins, and other minor components.

Brew on

Oh my bad. I thought that it measured density relative to distilled water as in 1.1 was 1.1x the density of distilled water and so on. I now know to not try and use it to try and be smart to work out how much of something else like caustic is in solution or assume things about molar weight!

 

[doug293cz]

... I thought that it measured density relative to distilled water as in 1.1 was 1.1x the density of distilled water and so on.

Yes, that is correct. But this statement is different than what you said in your previous post, which (at least as I parse it) says 1.10 SG corresponds to 10% extract concentration. If that's not what you were trying to say, then I apologize for misinterpreting.

I now know to not try and use it to try and be smart to work out how much of something else like caustic is in solution or assume things about molar weight!

What are you trying to say here?

Brew on

 

[Kharnynb]

I don't think so. I think the bottles will blow apart first.

obviously...but just calculating priming sugar to co2 ratio, it hits about 8 volumes per gallon...twice even the most carbed belgian tripels/kriek.

 

[stz]

What are you trying to say here?

We've quite a lot of different hydrometers which have quite narrow range (0-5, 0-10, 10-20. 20-30 and so on) the lower range occasionally proved useful when trying to make better guesses at/and or verify concentration of various known substances which have different densities. Have used that to then fine tune things like acid additions after calculating molarity.

 

[doug293cz]

We've quite a lot of different hydrometers which have quite narrow range (0-5, 0-10, 10-20. 20-30 and so on) the lower range occasionally proved useful when trying to make better guesses at/and or verify concentration of various known substances which have different densities. Have used that to then fine tune things like acid additions after calculating molarity.

Ok, so you are determining a correlation between solute concentration and specific gravity for a particular substance, and then using SG measurements to determine the concentration of a sample solution, correct? And, what units are your hydrometers calibrated for - °Plato, or something else?

Brew on

 

[beermanpete]

Substitution was 1# chocolate malt in the second batch for 1# roasted barley in the first batch.

I didn't include readings because I initially thought I misread the hydrometer. From my notes: First batch 1.340-1.20, second batch 1.20-1.14

The roasted barley and chocolate malt have similar extract potential and diastic power so I would not expect any difference in the OG due to this substitution. Perhaps there will be a difference in fermentability of the wort but that would not lead to overcarbing. It does seem that you have more total priming sugar than is common. This combined with bottling before the ferment is finished would certainly lead to too much carbonation and possibly exploding bottles.

You might be able to vent the bottles by either recapping them or lifting the edge of the caps lightly to vent and then repressing the cap in the capper.