Found beer on the floor of my Wine fridge

surri · Mar 20, 2014

Hey guys, new here. Just signed up today and can't wait to here from you guys.

Just purchased the Coopers kit over a month ago (actually my wife got it for me). I have to say I don't think I have ever had this much fun before. The kit really does it for me. I love beer, and I love spending Saturday afternoons attempting to make things.

Anyway, after the fun I had with brewing my first batch, I went into bottling after the fermentation process. Unfortunately being in Singapore, it's quite warm out, so I had to put bottles sideways in this wine fridge I have at home and set the temp to between 18 - 20 degrees Celsius. Most days I checked and it was sitting pretty at 18 degrees. The only problem was that whenever I would open the wine fridge, I'd find that the interior of the fridge was all sticky. I also found the bottom of the wine fridge was covered in this beautiful brown mess. Under the wine fridge, the same. I had to clean this up multiple times. I screwed the bottles tighter after that but this still happened from time to time.

Can somebody explain why this happened. It seems like the beer leaked from the top of the cap. I screwed it on quite tight but not sure why the beer was seeping out? If the cap was on tight, there's no reason why it should've seeped out right? I found some bottles were missing up to 1/4 of the beer I initially bottled in.

Also, a lot of it is coming out flat now but still drinkable.

Thanks all. I look forward to the help.

freisste · Mar 20, 2014

If they are screw top bottles, I have heard that they somehow loosen. I didn't believe it at first (and I've never experienced it as I use glass bottles), but I have heard of a lot of supporting (anecdotal) reports.

After you bottle, leave them upright for a couple days. Each day, retighten a little. After that, put them sideways and check periodically.

kh54s10 · Mar 20, 2014

I don't know what bottles you are using. I imagine the bottles you have cannot handle the carbonation so they leak.

Look into getting glass beer bottles a capper and some caps. Your beer will also carbonate faster if you keep them at about 70 degrees F.

unionrdr · Mar 20, 2014

If you're using PET bottles like Cooper's,the caps do indeed need to be unbelievably tight. I traded mine for a better bottle to use as a secondary. 12oz glass bottles & a super agata bench capper do the trick now.

user 62649 · Mar 20, 2014

When I started brewing I was using PET bottles and I needed to re-tighten every day for a couple of days. I found by keeping them upright in a cooler place (about 65*F) I no longer needed to check every day. I then was very done with PET I went out and bought a couple cases of my favorite beer that was not a screw cap and drank the beer, rinsed the bottles immediately and placed them back in the case. In about a month or so I had two cases of re-usable, re-cappable bottles for my home brew. Now I have progressed to the point that I have about 20-25 cases of usable bottles (all brown glass) that I don't use since I upgraded once again to kegging. If you were not so far away from Pennsylvania I would give you a couple cases for free.

jeremybmx10 · Mar 20, 2014

i went to the corner store and got myself 100 glass bottles but sucks cuz most of them are corona bottles so they need to be kept in the dark but all that cost me about 11$ because of the price of bottle return in quebec is 10 cents per bottle now i let them soak in cleaner and rinsed them and right before i bottle i will put them in the oven at 375 for 45 mins and then re sanitise em and bottle. but i found that for 11$ and its glass was 11$ well spent maybe try to go get yourself some?