First Bottle Bomb Experience

[Jmarsh544]

I started to keg my beer about 5 months ago and have quite a few kegged beers under my belt. Before kegging I had a large pipeline of bottled beers that I seemed to forget about until I decided to clean the kitchen cabinet out today. I pulled a few empty bottles out of my bottle storage cabinet and then proceeded to pull one of my bottles of Hob Goblin extract clone out of the cabinet and place it on the floor. (On a side note this beer has been bottled for 7 months and only four bottles remain.) I reached in and pulled a second bottle of the HG clone out and as I set it on the floor next to the first ****Boom**** the first bottle exploded about 12" from my face. I had always read about bottle bombs but never expected that the explosion would be so violent (i picked up glass shards up to 12 feet away).

After accessing the damage I ended up with beer in one of my eyes and some cuts to my forehead and hands but luckily avoided any major injury/ loss of vision. After cleaning up the mess I put the other HG clones in the fridge to be opened sooner than later to avoid any other incidents.

The worst part of the whole mess was cleaning 22oz of delicious smelling beer off of the floor without getting to sample how it had aged.

Moral of the story: be extremely careful when handling bottled beers and always let the beer ferment out before bottling and watch how much priming sugar you add to the bottling bucket.

 

[SeamusMac]

WOW you got lucky. I always add the priming sugar to my bottling bucket before siphoning the beer into it to ensure even distribution and I don't even look at the bottles of beer until they've been conditioning for 3 weeks... Just in case one decides to go BOOM on day 14.

 

[SevenFields]

I had my 1st bottle bomb this week also. It was a bottle of Raspberry wheat that was only half full when I bottled(didnt know that mattered). Next time, If I cant fill the last bottle all the way up, I will just dump it.
It was not fun cleaning up!!!

 

[Synovia]

I started to keg my beer about 5 months ago and have quite a few kegged beers under my belt. Before kegging I had a large pipeline of bottled beers that I seemed to forget about until I decided to clean the kitchen cabinet out today. I pulled a few empty bottles out of my bottle storage cabinet and then proceeded to pull one of my bottles of Hob Goblin extract clone out of the cabinet and place it on the floor. (On a side note this beer has been bottled for 7 months and only four bottles remain.) I reached in and pulled a second bottle of the HG clone out and as I set it on the floor next to the first ****Boom**** the first bottle exploded about 12" from my face. I had always read about bottle bombs but never expected that the explosion would be so violent (i picked up glass shards up to 12 feet away).

After accessing the damage I ended up with beer in one of my eyes and some cuts to my forehead and hands but luckily avoided any major injury/ loss of vision. After cleaning up the mess I put the other HG clones in the fridge to be opened sooner than later to avoid any other incidents.

The worst part of the whole mess was cleaning 22oz of delicious smelling beer off of the floor without getting to sample how it had aged.

Moral of the story: be extremely careful when handling bottled beers and always let the beer ferment out before bottling and watch how much priming sugar you add to the bottling bucket.

Thats weird that it went so long. I wonder if maybe that single bottle didn't get sanitized correctly and had some sort of infection.

 

[malkore]

sometimes its just a weakened bottle that finally gives up the ghost.

 

[Jmarsh544]

A few batches before I bottled that beer I received a bunch of 10 year old bottles that I washed and threw into the mix. Does the age of the bottle effect the integrity of the glass or could it be different standards that the bottles were made to?

 

[BoBoBenton]

So reviving a really old thread (waste not want not?)

I just had my first bottle bomb, about 20 mins ago actually.

Admittedly i did prime to 3.6 vol/Co2 and this was one of 5 not in suitably strong bottles (the other 4 were drank as the priming went on.)

I know stupid of me to use $hi##y bottles but I thought id chance it and i ran out of the stronger bottles, so didn't want to waste beer!


Any way story aside they go off like little grenades. i was working away and !!BANG!! (I store in the study while priming and work from home, i like to keep an eye and was honestly wanted to see the carnage if one did go off)

well, lesson learned all beer moved out of the house unless is priming when its in card board boxes then in bin bags!

 

[amandabab]

A few batches before I bottled that beer I received a bunch of 10 year old bottles that I washed and threw into the mix. Does the age of the bottle effect the integrity of the glass or could it be different standards that the bottles were made to?

age doesn't matter, its the individual bottle.
10 years is nothing, I have 1960's Olympia bottles in rotation and some 1970's budweiser returnables.

I wont use any bottle with a bubble in the glass, 1 its a weak point, 2 you never know if the bubble is open on the inside and can be sanitized.