Exploding Beer Bottles

[hiphops]

My five gallon batch of beer has been reduced to a rubble of broken bottles. With the knowledge that any remaining bottle is a ticking time bomb, I had to kill the entire batch. All of them were gushers. Totally frustrating.

Anyway, my guess is a failure to properly read the hydrometer, as the beer may have undergone a secondary fermentation once bottled.

Couple of questions . . .

1. Its been awfully hot here in New York City. Any chance that the heat may have been a factor???

2. I have this floating hydrometer stick. Its a total pain to use. In fact, its very difficult to read as the beer inside the tube with the hydrometer is somewhat concave (or convex) making it difficult to read the hydrometer. Is there a better and easier hydrometer out there in the market?

3. Do you think the non-exploding (yet gushing) beer bottles can be reused, or have they undergone too much stress to be of any future use.

4. Any other ideas as to how this could have happened?

Thanks everyone!

 

[RCCOLA]

How long did you let it ferment b4 bottling?

 

[hiphops]

approximately 2.5-3 weeks in the carboy. i didn't see any bubbles coming out of the airlock. however, from what i understand, that doesn't mean too much.

 

[RCCOLA]

How much priming sugar did ya use for how many gallons?

What kind of sanitizer?

 

[wonderbread23]

What was you OG? For most normal gravity beers, I would expect the fermentation to be complete. Any chance you accidentally added too much sugar? Other than that, how'd the beer taste? It could be a possible infection, although those tend to not move this quickly.

 

[hiphops]

How much priming sugar did ya use for how many gallons?

- 3/4 cup of corn sugar for a 5 (actually more like 4.7 or so) gallons

What kind of sanitizer?

- starsan

 

[Revvy]

What temp did you bottle at?

 

[hiphops]

What temp did you bottle at?

- well, thats the problem. its been real hot here. i'd say the temp at bottling was about 80 or so degrees. however, after bottling, we've been hit by a nasty heat wave, that brought temps in the upper 90's to low 100's. while its very hot in the apartment (i don't have a/c) its a bit cooler in the closet, where i stored the bottles.

 

[Zamial]

approximately 2.5-3 weeks in the carboy. i didn't see any bubbles coming out of the airlock. however, from what i understand, that doesn't mean too much.

This is 100% correct.

Also how much priming sugar did you use?

The heat may add to some of this but I suspect overpriming mixed with incomplete fermentation to be the cause of this.

As for the hydrometer...These are cheap and do work but can be a PITA. When mine breaks or I no longer trust it(or x-mas rolls around lol) I will buy a refractometer. They are 20-30 dollars and only require a few drops to give you a gravity reading that is digital.

 

[TipsyDragon]

1. a good portion of the CO2 from bottle carbonation is in the headspace of the bottle till you chill them. more heat means more pressure in that headspace. so its posable thats what the problem was.

2. i dont understand what you mean by difficult to read. i'm a visual person. if you can put some water in the tube and take a pic of the hydrometer. you may also think of switching to a refractometer.

3. dont know.

4. well the obvious answer would be that your SG wasn't low enough or was still falling when you bottled. since you didn't mention it you should wait 3 weeks before bottling. take two hydrometer readings 3-4 days apart and check that they are exactly the same after correcting for temperature. its posable you added to much priming sugar to the batch. typically you want to add 4-5 oz (by weight) to a 5 gallon batch. if you have less than 5 gallons in your bottling bucket you should add less sugar (measured volume)/5 * (4 or 5) oz. lastly its posable you had an infection. its posable you missed some sanitation somewhere during the bottling process and the bottles got infected and the little buggers ate what sugar that was left in the beer and produced enough CO2 to explode your bottles.


next time try to keep the bottles in the mid 70s till you are ready to chill them.

 

[passedpawn]

How much time did it ferment before you bottled it?

What was the fermentation temp?

So, what was the OG and FG? Most hydrometers are simply a floating bobber.

Size of batch? How much priming sugar was used?


If it fermented at room temperature for 2 weeks, it was probably done and you have something wild in your beer. If you fermented for 4 days and bottled, well... you were a little impatient.

If you fermented cold, it might not have been done, even if it was going for a while. For cold fermented beers, if you want to be sure that it finished, give it a rest at 65F for a couple of days. Then crash cool and bottle.

[edit] holy crap you guys are fast... there wasn't a single reply when I started typing

 

[hiphops]

What was you OG?

- i actually don't remember. i forgot to use the hydrometer when i first made the beer, but before pitching the yeast. after about 2.5 - 3 weeks, i sampled some beer in the hydromter and the readings never changed within a 2 day period. so, i let it sit for another 2-3 days and then bottled it.

Any chance you accidentally added too much sugar?

- perhaps. i did notice that after bottling it, the yeast seemed like it was coming back to life. more specifically, i saw that some of the yeast or whatever it was, kept floating from the bottom to the top and back to the bottom. i didn't think anything of it, as this was a heinekin-type bottle and, therefore, more transpoartent that the other bottles. so i just wrote it off as something that always occurs but was seeing for the first time. (i'm new to this brewing thing).

Other than that, how'd the beer taste?

- it was supposed to be a begliun wheat ale. as my friend who sampled it said, however, it tasted "creamy." it tasted like yeast. not totally gross but not very good either.

 

[hiphops]

What temp did you bottle at?

- i'd say it was in the 80's, by which i mean low-to-mid 80s. we just came off a bad hot spell and didn't want to bottle in the crazy heat and end up having sweat dripping into my bottling bucket!

 

[Special Hops]

Did you mix the priming sugar well? if it did not mix properly you can have gushers, explosions in some bottles and undercarbonbated in others.

 

[JLem]

I wonder if it was infected. 3 weeks in primary should be plenty of time for an ale to ferment, especially at warm temps. It could have been a stuck fermentation, but it would need to be REALLY stuck to end up with bottle bombs. Based on all your measurements, it doesn't seem like you added too much priming sugar. And if your measurements are correct, even storing at 100 degrees won't make the yeast produce more CO2. In fact, if fermentation temps were high, there's even less residual CO2 in the pre-bottled beer, making bottle bombs even less likely.

However, at those temps, an infection could really get going and eat up the normally non-fermentable carbs in there.

Just my $0.02

 

[camiller]

I wonder if it was infected. 3 weeks in primary should be plenty of time for an ale to ferment, especially at warm temps. It could have been a stuck fermentation, but it would need to be REALLY stuck to end up with bottle bombs. Based on all your measurements, it doesn't seem like you added too much priming sugar. And if your measurements are correct, even storing at 100 degrees won't make the yeast produce more CO2. In fact, if fermentation temps were high, there's even less residual CO2 in the pre-bottled beer, making bottle bombs even less likely.

However, at those temps, an infection could really get going and eat up the normally non-fermentable carbs in there.

Just my $0.02

+∞

The most likely thing is that something in the bottling process was not sanitized and some sort of infecting agent went to town on the long chain carbs that normal brewing yeast won't eat.

 

[robertbartsch]

I lived in NYC for 10 years. There are some things that are hard in apartments; brewing is one.

 

[hiphops]

yeah, they were all gushers, or more like a geisers!!! very painful to watch. hopefully, the weather will cool down and i can restart the process. thanks for everyone's replies.

 

[BeerJorge]

I don't think temperature was the cause of overcarbonation... it probably was an infection during transfer/bottling that turned your beer into gushers...

 

[Ringmaster]

Umm i'm kind of new to this brewing thing to so my thoughts on the subject might be null.. but i kind of have a feeling heat played a role in it. The people before me make a lot of sense but i'd like to say something..

Your not supposed to store beer in 100 degree areas. And basically with all the pressure in the beer bottle created from carbonation i have a hard time seeing it not work like a bomb when it gets to hot or under to much pressure.

I mean it's kind of like leaving a propane tank out when it's over a hundred isn't it?

 

[cheezydemon3]

BOTTLE BOMBS????? GEYSERS????

Temps are not the only problem.

Storing carbed beer at 100F might cause bombs, but I doubt it.

 

[TipsyDragon]

BOTTLE BOMBS????? GEYSERS????

Temps are not the only problem.

Storing carbed beer at 100F might cause bombs, but I doubt it.

i agree its not only the temps.

but as we know as temperature increases so does pressure in a sealed container. this coupled with the fact that allot of the CO2 hasn't dissolved into the beer and some has most likely come out of the beer because of the high temp. your looking at a increased risk of bottle bombs.

 

[JLem]

I mean it's kind of like leaving a propane tank out when it's over a hundred isn't it?

Nothing wrong with doing this...your propane tank will not explode.

The walls of your propane tank can handle the pressure of the expanding gas. Likewise, beer bottles should be able to withstand the pressure of CO2 coming out of solution even when stored at 100oF. I believe the gas will be forced back into solution way before rupturing the glass (assuming, of course, a "standard" amount of CO2 in the beer to begin with). Or maybe a better way to put it is that the pressure built up from the gas coming out of solution and being trapped by the glass will not allow any additional gas from escaping solution. Either way, bottles carbonated to standard pressures can withstand 100oF heat.

 

[cheezydemon3]

This is the first actual account of bottle bombs I have seen.

Tons of advisors here like to lament about the risks of bottle bombs, but I've never seen it.

It would take a LOT of overcarbonation and heat to burst a bottle.

 

[TipsyDragon]

This is the first actual account of bottle bombs I have seen.

Tons of advisors here like to lament about the risks of bottle bombs, but I've never seen it.

It would take a LOT of overcarbonation and heat to burst a bottle.

i've personally seen 3 bottles explode and there has been plenty of first hand posts on here (especially during the summer). its not so much the heat as a stuck fermentation becoming unstuck because of the heat or other factors (like an infection)

 

[hiphops]

actually, i think i came up with another factor in why the bottles exploded. i brew up a new batch of beer. when i put on the airlock, i noticed that i really wasn't all that tight. i had to really work hard to wedge it in there. its possible (or probable) that the air"lock" might actually have let air in.

 

[JLem]

actually, i think i came up with another factor in why the bottles exploded. i brew up a new batch of beer. when i put on the airlock, i noticed that i really wasn't all that tight. i had to really work hard to wedge it in there. its possible (or probable) that the air"lock" might actually have let air in.

When actively fermenting, enough CO2 is produced that air is not likely to get in - too much CO2 pressure pushing out. Even so, air moving in will not lead to bottle bombs. You need an excessive build up of pressurized gas (i.e. CO2 from fermentation in a sealed bottled). I'm still going with infection on this one.

 

[cheezydemon3]

I vote for gnomes.

Those little bastards had something to do with this.