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Malted Hand-Grenades
I just finished talking to a friend who had last week bottled some homebrew, which decided to explode on him in the middle of the night.
Home brew blowing up isn't too strange, usually the cap pops off it seems like, but he had bottles that had the side walls blow out with enough force to break other bottles they were with, embed glass in his walls and in his forehead (think he had them in his room when it happened).
Has anyone had this happen to them, the bottles themselves blowing up, not just popping the top off?
Had a 1 gal growler with a bit of under-fermented mead blow in my basement 3 yrs ago. I'm still finding glass shards here and there. It literally disintegrated... I found glass behind the fridge it was in front of. I'm glad my cat wasn't down there when it went off. What a terribly dangerous situation!
Anyway, these antics are good reason to ensure that you have bottled fully attenuated beer, mead, or otherwise. Or if you are not sure at least put the bottles in a container of sorts to contain the shrapnel; a used case box or 12-pack holder works well. Hope your friend is OK. Cheer!
My first growler ever botled was a bomb, blew the bottom right out. Since then only one bomb, I keep everything in my cellar, and my beer has its own room. I did prime a belgian to 4 vols as an experiment, I wanted both a nice tingly BSGA, and also wanted to make sure my belgian bottles would hold up. I put them all in a tote bin and covered them. Experiment worked, they held up and I got my high carb, but if they did blast the bin would have contained.
Does your buddy sleep with his beer? i am not judging- i think that is cool and all:)
Haha, yeah, he likes his beer quite abit, but hey, who doesn't here?!
He luckily didn't get any in his eyes, but he was pretty shaken up. Gave him an excuse to drink some beer at 3 in the morning though.
another reason to use plastic buckets. I've never had a bomb, but i'm sure I'm due, I still bottle, and i've quit using priming sugar, and use table sugar now. I had a bucket swell up to about twice it's size, and when I pulled out the air lock, it splattered all over the ceiling. If that would have been a carboy, I never would have known. From that time on , I always used blow off tubes instead of airlocks.
Yeah, haha, i've had a few nasty carboy incidents.... both times I've had crazy initial fermentation that caused the necks of my carboys to clog with hops, ending with green goo- splattered all over my ceiling. Not fun to clean, hahah.
I think my friends problem was mainly due to inaccurately measuring the primming sugar out... he didn't have a 'drug scale' but was using measuring spoons to try and guess it.
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