Death by cider..?

[StophJS]

Well, I thought I'd come on here and let all the good folks know that I can now say from experience that there is definitely a real possibility of bottle bombs with the stove-top pasteurization technique. And I don't mean bottle bombs like infected spraying beer bottles; I mean bottle bombs like an m-80 going off in your hand.

I think the possibility of this is definitely in direct proportion to amount you let the bottles carbonate before you pasteurize. Last time I made cider, I let the bottles carbonate for about 8 hours and pasteurized, but found this wasn't long enough. This time, I let it go for about 20 hours, checking periodically, and started pasteurizing.

The first thing I noticed this time around was that pasteurizing seemed to raise the level of the cider in the bottle by a half inch or so. One bottle in particular seemed very pressurized based on the way the dead yeast was moving inside of it, so I opened it over the sink and it sure as hell was. I figured I got unlucky with one. However, as I was removing my last batch of bottles from the pot.. BOOM. I'm standing there in a daze and checking to make sure I'm not bleeding.

Somehow, the rest of the bottles seem fine, so I don't know if they just carbed very unevenly because some bottles got more of the cider "trub" and thus more sugar or whatever. I do know that I would highly advise wearing some sort of protective gear when doing this. I think this experience has put me off cider for a while.

 

[Pickled_Pepper]

man! sorry to hear about that. I assume you WEREN'T bleeding? I gotta be honest with you, the bottle boiling thing just sounded scary to me. Now after reading your story...it's definitely not something I think I'll try anytime soon.

I'd rather drink it warm, dry as a bone and 'still' before losing a finger.

 

[StophJS]

Thanks, amazingly I wasn't hit by any glass even though it flew everywhere. Good thing too because I wasn't even smart enough to have a shirt on during this process.. From now on I think I'll make small enough batches that I can just cold crash it all in the fridge when it gets to the right attenuation. This is definitely how someone loses an eye.

 

[UpstateMike]

Wow! What temperature was the water at? Did you still have the heat on, or off?

I use at least one plastic bottle with every batch I bottle, when it gets to the right firmness, I know it's time to pasteurize. I also put bottles in / take bottles out of the bath with my hand in an "Ove Glove", mainly to protect from heat, but this may give some protection from shrapnel too.

 

[selfdestructed]

Yeah, why didn't you use the coke bottle so you knew if they where done?

 

[StophJS]

Wow! What temperature was the water at? Did you still have the heat on, or off?

I use at least one plastic bottle with every batch I bottle, when it gets to the right firmness, I know it's time to pasteurize. I also put bottles in / take bottles out of the bath with my hand in an "Ove Glove", mainly to protect from heat, but this may give some protection from shrapnel too.

I've heard of that plastic bottle trick but I've never really looked into it. I thought I had a good idea of how long it would take to carbonate. The weird thing is, the couple of ciders that I've popped open so far don't seem very carbonated at all. Maybe the pressure got so high that Co2 actually managed to escape through the cap seals? Even if that did happen, obviously it didn't stop this particular explosion.

As far as temperature, I was getting the water up to 190, killing the heat, dropping the bottles in, and putting the lid on for ten minutes.

 

[UpstateMike]

As far as temperature, I was getting the water up to 190, killing the heat, dropping the bottles in, and putting the lid on for ten minutes.

Your method seems right. Old bottles, perhaps?

 

[StophJS]

It's possible that I had a couple older ones interspersed with the rest of them. They couldn't be older than a few months though.

 

[divi2323]

How full are you filling them. I don't think this aspect of the method is discussed often enough. By putting a little more airspace in your bottles the gas has more volume to compress in. Whereas the same gas produced with say a nearly full bottle will cause more pressure.

Take a volume of 1.75 cubic inches. (3/4 inch bottle opening with a 4 inch neck, pi x r^2 x length). Gas has room to fill up that space where if you allowed only 1 inch of headspace it would compress the same amount of gas about 4 times as much. So theoretically you could have 10psi in a 4 inch neck or 40 psi in a 1 inch neck. I would assume bottle failure rates lie somewhere on that upper end, but I wouldn't have the expertise to calculate a bottles failure rate based upon headspace but I'm sure some of you catch where I'm going with it.

Also another variable you didn't mention is how much and what kind of priming sugar did you use and how big was your batch?

 

[nukinfuts29]

Yikes! Glad you are ok. My cider gets bottled Monday and i'm planning to run it in the dishwasher

 

[dinnerstick]

how did you prime the bottles? was the sugar syrup mixed completely thoroughly 100% no question about it throughout the bucket? is shirt wearing something you save for special occasions?

 

[Diver165]

I learned my lesson with carbing cider. I had several bottle bombs on my first batch. I could hear them damn things exploding from the other side of my house. I thought someone was shooting at the damn house. Thank goodness I took someones suggestion and put the bottles into a milk crate wrapped in towels. (Shrapnel control).

I had better luck with letting them carb at room temp for 1 week then into the refridgerator they go. They stay there until consumed. They get a sticker that says KEEP REFRIDGERATED. But I guess I've grown lazy in my old age. I do mostly still ciders now.

 

[StophJS]

How full are you filling them. I don't think this aspect of the method is discussed often enough. By putting a little more airspace in your bottles the gas has more volume to compress in. Whereas the same gas produced with say a nearly full bottle will cause more pressure.

Take a volume of 1.75 cubic inches. (3/4 inch bottle opening with a 4 inch neck, pi x r^2 x length). Gas has room to fill up that space where if you allowed only 1 inch of headspace it would compress the same amount of gas about 4 times as much. So theoretically you could have 10psi in a 4 inch neck or 40 psi in a 1 inch neck. I would assume bottle failure rates lie somewhere on that upper end, but I wouldn't have the expertise to calculate a bottles failure rate based upon headspace but I'm sure some of you catch where I'm going with it.

Also another variable you didn't mention is how much and what kind of priming sugar did you use and how big was your batch?

I filled the typical bottling wand standard; just filled up to the top and pulled the wand. Maybe with active cider like this it would be better to leave more room. I did a 5 gallon batch and tossed in 5 oz of dextrose for the hell of it, although it would have carbonated anyway given that it was still on active ferment. Certainly possible that the sugar wasn't adequately mixed.

Yikes! Glad you are ok. My cider gets bottled Monday and i'm planning to run it in the dishwasher

Thanks and good luck with that, I'd be curious to hear how it turns out.

how did you prime the bottles? was the sugar syrup mixed completely thoroughly 100% no question about it throughout the bucket? is shirt wearing something you save for special occasions?

If I were to do this again I guess I'd really get in there and mixed it up rather than expecting the siphon flow to do he work. No need to worry about infection if you're pasteurizing. As for the shirt, I run hot and took it off because of the heat from the stove. Could've been nasty :/

 

[StophJS]

I had better luck with letting them carb at room temp for 1 week then into the refridgerator they go. They stay there until consumed. They get a sticker that says KEEP REFRIDGERATED.

This is definitely the best idea. Perma-cold crash will stop fermentation for good.

 

[zmad2000]

I tried the stove top method and lost a whole gallon of my first batch to an explosion but that was still in the pot. Lots of cider all over the place though. I know from working at a brewery in germany that beer bottles can "explode" even when empty because of temperature differences which stress the glass. Its kinda cool to be looking at a bottle that just goes pop. Now adding pressure behind those temperature differences can exacerbate the situation causing an explosion like the one u had.

I have found that putting the bottles in the sink and filling it with hot water reduces those temperature stresses. It takes a while longer than in the pot but you just let them sit there till they have cooled. Also when using priming sugar i always use less than more.

 

[StophJS]

I still really find it strange that I had some bottles explode, and the rest of the cider seems essentially still.

 

[divi2323]

I still really find it strange that I had some bottles explode, and the rest of the cider seems essentially still.

This right here tells me your priming sugar wasn't properly mixed. Its an assumption of course.

 

[SenorPepe]

is shirt wearing something you save for special occasions?

lol!

 

[oldmate]

Could have been a weakness in the bottle itself such as a scratch, nick or thin area of glass. What temperature were you pasteurising at?

 

[StophJS]

Could have been a weakness in the bottle itself such as a scratch, nick or thin area of glass. What temperature were you pasteurising at?

190. It seemed to me that some bottles had altogether much more pressure than others though so it probably was indeed uneven mixing. I found it weird that such a radical difference would have emerged in a day nonetheless, but obviously it did. I think the reason is something like this: The cider was still fermenting in full swing so there was still tons of yeast in suspension.. Corn sugar ferments more quickly than cider sugars in my experience, hence the quick development of very uneven pressure as a result of uneven mixing.

 

[Vernacular]

You say the cider was still actively fermenting... as in, it was not still? If that was the case you bottled a bit early. I don't bottler mine till it is absolutely done bubbling. But then again you say it seemed uneven from bottle to bottle. Hmmmm... So far the only bottle bombs I have ever had were homemade root beer and what a mess~!

 

[StophJS]

You say the cider was still actively fermenting... as in, it was not still? If that was the case you bottled a bit early. I don't bottler mine till it is absolutely done bubbling. But then again you say it seemed uneven from bottle to bottle. Hmmmm... So far the only bottle bombs I have ever had were homemade root beer and what a mess~!

I did bottle during active fermentation, but this was deliberate in order to achieve a cider with more residual sweetness. This is why I pasteurized the cider, to kill of the remaining yeast and halt fermentation once I had reached the desired carbonation.

 

[hroth521]

Since I dropped the temp to 160 for 20 min I have not had any more bottle bombs. 190 is too high. I pasteurized 2 five gallon batches last year at 160. I'm finishing the last bottles currently and they taste great. YMMV