Had A Bottle Bomb what do I do now?

[Jeff Murphy]

Well had my first bottle explode today.

Very good chance I may have bottle before fermentation completed, I checked the FG and it aligned to the recipe. I used the about of priming sugar the recipe called for...

Is there anything i can do now to ensure i don't have more bottles explode?

Will putting the bottles in the fridge help, i read something about releasing gas, how do you do this with capped bottles? uncap and recap?

Thanks for any advice!
Jeff

 

[Murphys_Law]

What ever you do I’d wear eye protection, gloves and a long sleeve **** when handling these!

 

[Elkobrewer]

You also may want to let them bottle condition in a cooler so that way if they blow it will be contained. That’s the way I did it when I bottled.

 

[homebrewer_99]

YES...you need to put them all in the fridge to retard (slow) any further fermentation.

 

[RM-MN]

Use a hand bottle opener and lift the lid just enough to hear the excess gas escape. Most will reseal when you release the opener. You will be doing this to every bottle several times as there is a huge amount of CO2 to be released.

If you remove the caps, the beer will gush out and you will be left with a mess and 1/4 of the beer left in the bottle.

Consider this to be penance for not following all the instructions given here.

 

[bucketnative]

Use a hand bottle opener and lift the lid just enough to hear the excess gas escape. Most will reseal when you release the opener. You will be doing this to every bottle several times as there is a huge amount of CO2 to be released.

If you remove the caps, the beer will gush out and you will be left with a mess and 1/4 of the beer left in the bottle.

Consider this to be penance for not following all the instructions given here.

I would add to this to place a quarter on top of the cap (assuming you are US-based) prior to using the opener. The quarter will keep the cap from deforming while you very gently let the CO2 hiss out.

As others said, eye protection, gloves, and long sleeves are paramount since you've had one explode already. If you have a full face shield, I would wear that is well.

 

[ApolloSimcoe]

Bottle bombs are never a good thing. The advice above is all sound. How many batches have you brewed? Its best to always revisit your process and correct those errors. Off the top of my head i can only think of three reasons one can have bottle bombs. 1. Contamination issue. 2. You didn't reach your final gravity. 3. To much priming sugar.

I asked how many batches you are in because "Using the amount the recipe called for" is never sound when it comes to priming. Most recipes calculate the amount of priming sugar on 5 gallons of beer. However by the time your beer reaches the bottling bucket you no longer actually have 5 gallons. There are always small losses here and there: Trub, hops, yeast settle etc. If the amount they give you is for 5 gallons and you only have 4.5 then you have just over primed. Use a priming sugar calculator based on the # of gallons in your bottling bucket, not 5 gallons.

Hope this helps!

 

[Jeff Murphy]

So far it seems to be isolated, it could be possible the bottle may have been weak... i put 7 in the fridge yesterday, and then decided to test them out, none of them gushed, had good carbonation and was probably my best batch yet!

I used 138g or 4.9oz of Dextrose, the volume in the bucket was just under 5 gallons at 4.8.

It was an American Pale Ale and the OG was 1.057 and FG was 1.011, it was stored at 68F, possibly slightly warmer. It was fermented for 19 days.

This is my 2nd All Grain Batch, 10th overall

 

[flars]

Excess gas can be released by lifting the edge of the cap and immediately recrimping. I don't think this will work if fermentation had continued in the bottle. You would most likely get heavy foam. Not enough time to recrimp with a wing capper.

So far it seems to be isolated, it could be possible the bottle may have been weak... i put 7 in the fridge yesterday, and then decided to test them out, none of them gushed, had good carbonation and was probably my best batch yet!

I used 138g or 4.9oz of Dextrose, the volume in the bucket was just under 5 gallons at 4.8.

It was an American Pale Ale and the OG was 1.057 and FG was 1.011, it was stored at 68F, possibly slightly warmer. It was fermented for 19 days.

This is my 2nd All Grain Batch, 10th overall

You may have had a single bottle infected. If that is the case there could be another one or more. Keep the bottles in strong totes until they are chilled.

 

[flars]

So far it seems to be isolated, it could be possible the bottle may have been weak... i put 7 in the fridge yesterday, and then decided to test them out, none of them gushed, had good carbonation and was probably my best batch yet!

I used 138g or 4.9oz of Dextrose, the volume in the bucket was just under 5 gallons at 4.8.

It was an American Pale Ale and the OG was 1.057 and FG was 1.011, it was stored at 68F, possibly slightly warmer. It was fermented for 19 days.

This is my 2nd All Grain Batch, 10th overall

You may have had a single bottle infected. If that is the case there could be another one or more. Keep the bottles in strong totes until they are chilled.

 

[El Nino]

What ever you do I’d wear eye protection, gloves and a long sleeve poopy when handling these!

I do that when opening the first bottle in every batch, lol (well not the long sleeve, but the sunglasses / gloves ). I don't know if that's being overly cautious, but better safe than sorry!

I also store my bottles in a cooler so if it explodes, it's most likely contained. It would take a hell of an explosion to get through 2 layers of plastic

 

[ApolloSimcoe]

I also store my bottles in a cooler so if it explodes, it's most likely contained. It would take a hell of an explosion to get through 2 layers of plastic

Learned that the hard way. Now everything goes into Rubbermaid totes right after bottling. With weighted lids

 

[Dland]

Hope it was a single bottle overcharged, or infected. Back when I bottled I had a whole 10 gallon batch go bad, probably due to lapse in sanitation, probably the home made immersion chiller. (It was back in the '90s before current sanitizing methods were available in homebrew land) The things started exploding on their own in the basement, were all gushers, and pretty undrinkable.

Was in a shared, rented house, pretty much ended that generation of home brewing.

 

[Jeff Murphy]

Well it appears to be an isolated explosion, likely due to a dirty bottle, when i was sanitizing the bottles i had one or two that were a little funky due to not rinsing when it was emptied last time. I have gone through about 15 bottles and not one gusher... Lesson learned on being extra careful while sanitizing the bottles.

 

[kcoect]

One thing a LHBS taught me in regards to infections being in bottles, hold the bottle up to the like and tilt it slightly. If there's a ring of "muck" forming inside the neck, then there's a good chance that the beer in that bottle is infected (the ring is made by the stuff growing in the bottle). Normal carbonation won't leave a ring at the top of the bottle in the neck (where the top of the beer is). I've done this a number of times to find an infected bottle or two and luckily never had any blow on me...

 

[Crysta Waston]

As per my opinion when we keep bottle in the freezer, then there are more molecules present outside the bottle than on the inside, so pressure is more on outside of the bottle as compare to inside.