Exploding Bottle Question

[mfreeman]

Brewing for the last several years, I've heard many horror stories about exploding bottles from gusher infections or eager home brewers who bottled to early. And until recently I've never had an experience with such an event. Until the other day when a friend called with an interesting story.

My Rockin Rootbeer Stout is my attempt at an alcoholic rootbeer, basically a milk stout with rootbeer extract and a few other additions. I brewed the beer in the end of October, bottled in November after 3 weeks of primary fermentation and started enjoying it about 2 weeks after that. For Christmas I gave said friend a 4 pack of my latest offerings which included 2 bottles of this beer. She drank one and left the other sit in her fridge until Monday when she came home from work and found the remnants of war in her fridge. The bottled appears to have burst and shattered several of the shelfs in her fridge.

Several things strike me as odd about this one, the first is that the beer was not over carbonated, I used the standard 5 ounces of corn sugar to prime a slightly larger than 5 gallon batch. Second, no other bottles have had a problem and I have nearly a case still sitting at room temperature in my basement. This leads me to rule out carbonation. Third it happened to a beer that has been in the fridge for almost a month, I've never heard of them blowing in the fridge like that before. One last oddity was the fact that the bottle didn't shatter, its like the bottom just came off. I'll add a pic or two to illustrate for you, my friend documented the whole thing for me.

The bottom of the bottle is missing

Because it stayed behind in the 4pack

So I'm just curious for input here, does this seem strange or not?

 

[PVH]

Strange how the bottom just came off like that. I have never seen that happen. Makes me think there was preexisting weakness there.

 

[Clonefarmer]

Could have been a weak bottle.

 

[drumming102]

yea my guess would be weak bottle.

 

[mfreeman]

So is the morale of the story here to drink homebrew faster? Lol! I definitely thought it was a little strange when compared to the stories. Would have been something to see though a true bottle rocket.

 

[brew2enjoy]

First thing that comes to mind is a defective bottle.

 

[superjunior]

bad bottle or a single bottle infection

 

[yodalegomaster]

I have seen the bottoms blow off of a bottle like that. It's a week spot in the design of the bottle. I have it happen all the time with 1L groshe style brown bottles. I think the problem here is we don't know what the sugar level is in the bottle when we started. If it was normal beer we could tell with a hydrometer. but when you added the rootbeer extract we don't know what happened to the sugar level in the beer. It could have been the last on to be bottled with all the sugar at the bottom.

 

[malkore]

bad bottle or something 'whacked down' on top the bottle and blew out the bottom.

glass is a fickle beast...one of the reasons I'm not a fan of using the oven to heat sanitize bottles...hot/cold/hot/cold/hot/cold/pile of glass shards. the cycle ends like that eventually.

 

[ultravista]

But how did it shatter the glass shelf in the fridge? That must of been onehelluva bomb.

 

[mrgreen4242]

Holy schnike. My SWMBO would kill me. This motivates me to get to work on the keezer.... fast.

 

[peachwein]

I have it happen all the time with 1L groshe style brown bottles.

man, now you've got me paranoid... i just got 24 1L flip-tops for christmas... i hope that's not the case, because they are FAR FROM CHEAP! Not to mention all 24 are full of either Blonde ale or Hefe at this point...haha

 

[juslod]

man, now you've got me paranoid... i just got 24 1L flip-tops for christmas... i hope that's not the case, because they are FAR FROM CHEAP! Not to mention all 24 are full of either Blonde ale or Hefe at this point...haha

I just had a 33 oz flip top bottle blow on me a few weeks ago, I got them as a gift before christmas. I have the rest sitting in reinforced boxes just in case they happen to blow

 

[slinky0390]

But how did it shatter the glass shelf in the fridge? That must of been onehelluva bomb.

It looks like it shot off like a rocket and the cap of the bottle hit the shelf above it.

 

[shamrockdoc]

Brewing for the last several years, I've heard many horror stories about exploding bottles from gusher infections or eager home brewers who bottled to early. And until recently I've never had an experience with such an event. Until the other day when a friend called with an interesting story.

My Rockin Rootbeer Stout is my attempt at an alcoholic rootbeer, basically a milk stout with rootbeer extract and a few other additions. I brewed the beer in the end of October, bottled in November after 3 weeks of primary fermentation and started enjoying it about 2 weeks after that. For Christmas I gave said friend a 4 pack of my latest offerings which included 2 bottles of this beer. She drank one and left the other sit in her fridge until Monday when she came home from work and found the remnants of war in her fridge. The bottled appears to have burst and shattered several of the shelfs in her fridge.







Several things strike me as odd about this one, the first is that the beer was not over carbonated, I used the standard 5 ounces of corn sugar to prime a slightly larger than 5 gallon batch. Second, no other bottles have had a problem and I have nearly a case still sitting at room temperature in my basement. This leads me to rule out carbonation. Third it happened to a beer that has been in the fridge for almost a month, I've never heard of them blowing in the fridge like that before. One last oddity was the fact that the bottle didn't shatter, its like the bottom just came off. I'll add a pic or two to illustrate for you, my friend documented the whole thing for me.

The bottom of the bottle is missing

Because it stayed behind in the 4pack

So I'm just curious for input here, does this seem strange or not?

That flat bread you got there is good.