What exactly is happening?

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rocketsan

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Been bottle aging a double chocolate stout for nine months. Had three 750ml bottles left. Came home to the smell of stout in my brew room and one of the bottoms of a bottle blew out. Refrigerated the others and they foamed like mad. It tasted great but clearly something nefarious was going on.

What? Assuming some sort of infection just surprised it took nine months...


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It seems that there was either a priming problem in those bottles or an infection set in causing the bottle bomb and over-carbonation.
 
9 months ago would have been in November when you bottled it. How did you prime? Did you use priming sugar and water or those hard candy looking things? If it's the later, it may have just taken that long for the chunk of sugar to dissolve and for the yeasties to eat it all. what's the temperature in your brew room? If it's not climate controlled, it could be that the heat accelerated the bottle conditioning fermentation. The bottles that you do have that foamed out do sound over carbed.
 
Priming sugar as per the recipe. It came in a brewers best kit. Brew room is air conditioned with central air...


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SO aside form the foam, how does it taste? It could be that some bottles over carbonated but most likely a few bottlles may have developed an infection. Yes, it could take 9 months for an infection to take hold and cause the pressure to finally build up enough from the additional fermentation going on.

Think sour beers and bugs, some take years to fully develop:)
 
The quantity of priming sugar that you get in those kits is enough for 5 gallons in your bottling bucket. Often times, you're not going to get 5 gallons in your bottling bucket if you start with 5 gallons in your fermenter. Remember, fill your fermenter by Gravity and not by volume. You're using extract, so you should hit your gravity with no problem and you should end up with 5 gallons in the bottling bucket. In your fermenting bucket, you should have about 5.5 (or even more) gallons.
 
The quantity of priming sugar that you get in those kits is enough for 5 gallons in your bottling bucket. Often times, you're not going to get 5 gallons in your bottling bucket if you start with 5 gallons in your fermenter. Remember, fill your fermenter by Gravity and not by volume. You're using extract, so you should hit your gravity with no problem and you should end up with 5 gallons in the bottling bucket. In your fermenting bucket, you should have about 5.5 (or even more) gallons.

While he might have ended up with 4.5 gallons instead of 5, that's not enough to cause bottle bombs. If the supplied priming sugar was good for 2.5 vols of C02, it wouldn't even hit 3.0 (be in the 2.7 range) if he had half a gallon less...
 
Sounds like a gusher infection. I wonder if there was a flaw in the bottle that broke and it just couldn't handle the increased pressure from the CO2 the infection gave off.
 
I made a Chocolate Stout last January (2013) and every bottle I've opened so far was a gusher. It has been months since I opened one, and I have had no bottle bombs so far. The ones I did taste, tasted as expected. I guess I should put one in the fridge for a week. I will post next week if I remember.
I just found some of the the Triple Chocolate Stout I brewed in March of this year. I will put one of TCS in fridge this week to compare.
 
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