Light the blue touch paper!

[Batlugs]

BOOM!

Over primed, not fermented out or too little head space?

Cheers.

 

[Dads_Ale]

Possibly overprimed or a defective bottle. What priming ratio did you use?
I leave a very small air gap and have not had any problems (touching wood now :) )
I always worked on the smaller the air gap the less the pressure build up will be.

 

[Bigjas]

Blimey, that went with a bang!!! I never thought beer could go that to one of those!! Either you miscalculated the priming sugar or it was still fermenting when you kegged it. Bet it made a right mess?

 

[braziliain]

Oh my. That must have been a surprise?

 

[pms67]

Hope it didn't ruin the caravan

 

[Hoppyland]

Oh dear!!
Agree with Dads_Ale. I reckon the amount of headspace is irrelevant. You can compress gas, but you can't compress liquid - and the amount of dissolved gas a liquid can hold is way less than the potential volume that can be built up by gas compression. I reckon that, basically, the bigger the airspace, the bigger your potential bomb!!
So you're left with overpriming, packaging whilst still fermenting, or a secondary fermentation chomping on the stuff the "proper" yeast couldn't digest. (Or any combination of these!)

 

[terrym]

Batlugs
The cause is obvious; too much CO2.
So if I were you I would be seriously looking at what you did to this brew.
I presume you keep records.
I hope you have no other kegs from the same batch; if so you need to consider what you should do with them. In extreme someone could get hurt.

 

[Batlugs]

All records show that all gravities hit target (using Brewlog software) so it suggests it was fermented out. Keg primed with 2 carbs drops so don't think it could be over primed. The keg had distorted so may be a faulty keg.

The rest of the batch is in a corny and no build up in that.

Didn't blow in the caravan (HTMO wouldn't be suited) it went in the boot of the car on the way! The agitation of the journey must have been the detonator.

The clean up went quite well really.

Cheers

 

[terrym]

Your photo suggests that the minikeg was torn apart with quite a force, irrespective of whether it was faulty or not.
These kegs have a pressure limit from the little I know about them. Perhaps you doubled up on the carb drops by mistake and that is responsible.
All I can add is that I would be monitoring the corny for any overpressure there. You could also draw off a sample and do an SG check to see if it has dropped by much from your FG, which may suggest it hadn't finished.

 

[MickDundee]

Your photo suggests that the minikeg was torn apart with quite a force, irrespective of whether it was faulty or not.
These kegs have a pressure limit from the little I know about them. Perhaps you doubled up on the carb drops by mistake and that is responsible.
All I can add is that I would be monitoring the corny for any overpressure there. You could also draw off a sample and do an SG check to see if it has dropped by much from your FG, which may suggest it hadn't finished.

I might be wrong, but I don't think you get minikeg specific carbonation drops. If he's using the ones for bottles he's probably got less than 10g sugar in there, which is well within the realms of a minikeg's limits (Brew UK recommend 20g per keg, I usually do 25g on pale ales with no ill effects and 12g on my DIY Dog Santa Paws)

 

[terrym]

I might be wrong, but I don't think you get minikeg specific carbonation drops. If he's using the ones for bottles he's probably got less than 10g sugar in there, which is well within the realms of a minikeg's limits (Brew UK recommend 20g per keg, I usually do 25g on pale ales with no ill effects and 12g on my DIY Dog Santa Paws)

You are right that I might be wrong (!) in my appreciation of carbonation drops, especially since I don't use them.
However it doesn't alter my view that a the keg was split open by quite a force, which could only have come from too much CO2 in the keg, wherever that came from.
Anyway, that's me done now on this topic. I've already said too much. :whistle:

 

[Batlugs]

Thanks for all your input, I'll keep an eye on the corny.

By the way, just got back from the 'van and the car smells bloody gorgeous, eau de Art Genesis Stout I think it's called:)

Cheers