Bottle bombs

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jceg316

jceg316

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Something odd happened today. I've had 3 batches of beer sitting in my garage for a long time. Been slowly drinking through them and they've been fine in terms of carbonation.

I brought some with me to a party today where the barman put them on ice, I opened 2 of them which again were fine, but 2 of them exploded. I have no idea why that would happen though. Does anyone know why 2 bottles would randomly explode after months of being fine but the rest of the batch is carbonated properly?

Thanks
 
If they exploded while sitting on ice, then the glass gave out with the temperature change. Are you re-cycling bottles? Amstel bottles are too weak for bottle conditioning. How is it that 2 exploded and the rest were OK? Did you batch prime? Was there a priming sugar gradient in your priming bucket and these two bottles got fed extra priming sugar? Do you have an idea of where in the bottling process these 2 bad boys were - early or late? Did you use priming tabs (sugar pellets of equal weight) instead of batch priming? If all bottles were equal and you used tabs, treating all bottles the same, then perhaps someone else has an answer...


Shore Points
 
Weak bottle? You don't say what type of bottle you used, but when I had my bomb I blamed a combination of over-carbing and the 750ml ex-BirraMoretti bottle not being able to handle that kind of carbonation level.
 
I may have the wrong guy here but I think @notlaw other half knows about this kind of thing if it is temperatire related....

Well possibly he might be able to give an insight as to whether the temp change could be a reason..
 
I reckon it was the sudden temp change and weak bottles. I do reuse bottles which might cause this to happen, but it could have been a new bottle as I also supplement with new bottles from ideon.

I use 330 ml brown bottles and boil sugar in water, pour the sugar into the bottling bucket then syphon the beer into the bucket. I can't say where these were in the bottling run. These bottles used demerara sugar for 2 batches and dextrose for another.
 
Not sure if this has any bearing but I used to work in a bar. Sometime when the glasses would come out of the glass washing machine/dishwasher, still being very hot, you'd only have to litterally touch some of them and they'd explode. Never worked out why.
 
I think it must be the sudden temp change and weak bottles. There were some left over which we had for dinner, no carb problems at all.

With weak glass the temp change doesn't have to be that big, I.e. boiling to freezing, just big enough.
 
I don't think HB travels well, anytime I've travelled with a bottle I've always advised to leave it for a few days befor opening it.
 
I think movement is more likely than temperature. If chilling glass bottles was an issue we wouldn't all have experienced bottle bombs.

I think that if you move bottles around and stir up the yeast sediment you are creating millions of individual nucleation sites for CO2 bubbles, around the yeast particles. The gas is trying to escape the liquid and potential ends up breaking the glass.

I took some beer away camping this weekend. Even though the beer had been clear and normally carbonated at home every bottle tried to empty itself by frothing over as soon as I opened it. The beer had been sitting still for quite a few hours but I think there was still lots of yeast in suspension.
 
Simonh82 said:
I think movement is more likely than temperature. If chilling glass bottles was an issue we wouldn't all have experienced bottle bombs.

I think that if you move bottles around and stir up the yeast sediment you are creating millions of individual nucleation sites for CO2 bubbles, around the yeast particles. The gas is trying to escape the liquid and potential ends up breaking the glass.

I took some beer away camping this weekend. Even though the beer had been clear and normally carbonated at home every bottle tried to empty itself by frothing over as soon as I opened it. The beer had been sitting still for quite a few hours but I think there was still lots of yeast in suspension.
Click to expand...

I understand this happens when bottles get shaken up, but they were all on the same car journey the party, at the party the ones I opened did not fizz up and poured clear, yet a couple of them broke.

It is possible for temp changes to cause this if they were cheap bottles which were only meant to be used once and recycled. If they'd been used a few times, which is likely, they do get weaker as over their life they get knocked, dropped, etc. Plus they've spent their life in a garage where there is no stable temperature and it fluctuates day and night and with the seasons.
 
Only a really sudden thermal shock would cause the bottle to break. And I mean break, not shatter or explode. If they explode it has to be a combination of weak/thin/faulted glass and carbonation on the high side. The temperature change will affect it, but it has to be a pretty severe change to cause it to break.

On the glasses breaking from the dishwasher... you are definitely best off letting them cool down a while before stacking.
 
As stated, rapid cooling could cause glassware to break, but it would break as it was cooled.

The rapid uneven cooling creates tension stresses in the glass, and glass is weak under tension. (See Prince Rupert's Teardrop on youtube)

They could look like they were exploding, as a crack would propagate around the bottle very quickly. But as I say, I think this would happen as they were put on ice, as once the temperature was stable across the bottle the stresses would be gone.
 

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