Help avoiding **MASSIVE** beer explosions!

[DieBartDie]

New problem - the exploding beer that yesterday I transferred after being in the primary for a week, has cracked the 6.5 gallon secondary carboy! This is with only 2.5 gallons of the stuff in there with an airlock.

DieBartDie

 

[WortMonger]

Hey DieBartDie, have you seen this website? I think it is a pretty cool setup. I have plans for one as well, but on a keg scale.

 

[BierMuncher]

New problem - the exploding beer that yesterday I transferred after being in the primary for a week, has cracked the 6.5 gallon secondary carboy! This is with only 2.5 gallons of the stuff in there with an airlock.

DieBartDie

You may want to consider a new hobby.

No reason for 2.5 gallons of fermented beer to damage a carboy. Something must have happened to the glass.

Start with bigger fermenters and adequate allowance for pressure and beer to blow off and your problems should go away...

 

[SuperiorBrew]

6g BB

Now I usually remember the foam control drops.

 

[WortMonger]

Wow, that is a happy fermentation isn't it?

 

[Schlenkerla]

I was just gonna post a thread as this is what not to do!

I discoved that I got lucky last week. No explosions no damage, no loss of beer.

(Homegrown Cascades)

Luckily I was using a PET Carboy and it didn't pack out real hard. The Whole hops kept it from sealing off 100%. I brewed four beers that day and I was getting too lazy and was in a hurry. (Maybe too buzzed) I didn't make an effort to keep the hops out of the primary. Dumb. Just flippin' dumb.

I think I'll call it my Lucky-Dumb-Ass Amber. I had to compress a picture to upload it and over compressed it and got this as a result!!

Should make for a good label background!!!! Kind of 70's Psychedelic...

I shoud use the 1" hose idea and keep the the hops out!

 

[Zeitgeister]

Has anyone ever had experience with bottle explosions?

I still don't know what happened, but one night, I think a single bottle ruptured, which triggered a chain-reaction with the rest of the box.

Two years later, I still have no idea what happened... over-sugared? over-yeasted? or just a poor capping/flawed bottle?

I always approach with caution now, and make sure that the bottles sit in the uninhabited cellar

 

[RM-MN]

There are two related causes of bottle explosions or bottle bombs. The first is too much sugar as that is where most of the carbonation comes from. Sometimes that is due to a mismeasurement and sometimes it is from bottling beer that hadn't completed fermenting. The residual sugars in the fermenting beer plus the priming sugar means that the yeast produce too much CO2 and the resulting pressure blows the bottle apart.

The other problem is poor or lack of sanitation which allows a wild yeast to get started in the bottles. Some of these wild yeast can eat sugars that are not normally fermentable and the pressure in the bottle continues to grow until they explode. Your clue to this might be an off flavor of beers consumed prior to those exploding.