De Garde bottle blows up its own!

This is another example of why the entire bottle should be waxed.

 

There's always a possibility that the bottle was slightly chipped at the shoulder from mishandling before or after filling, which would be the starting point for the break, thus not an entire batch of bottles is suspect.

 

Sounds like a job for …

 

Maybe it got mad cause you think it’s a lambic.

 

No. It looks consistent with molding points, Lambics are highly carbonated, so this raises the question of vols. and what the bottles can, and or should handle, and also bottle molding inconsistencies. Which DO happen, and should be a part of qa/qc evaluation.

 

Except for the minor point that this beer is not a lambic, it’s a wild ale.

 

Except for lambics are open air/ spontaneously fermented, and so forth. But.
Sure. I can agree with you being a stickler for details. The addition of botanicals does make that distinction very clear. This could also point out lackadaisical cellaring habits, and I can regard the additional sediment left in solution as being a suspect for the WHY the bottle became compromised at the injection points it spurted forth from.

 

I won’t split hairs any further about lambic vs. wild. But I will say that I’ve been to de Garde (last summer) and, while I love their beers, they didn’t seem to have a massive operation or a huge staff, so quality control could be a factor—or they just got a defective bottle and this is not a sign of wider problems. The bottles they use also seem to be made from a thinner glass than many lambics and gueuzes from Belgium (or even another, similar Oregon brewery that is no longer with us, Logsdon). So combine a potentially more highly carbonated style (bottle conditioned?) with thinner glass and these incidents will occur from time to time.

 

Where did the beer go?

Enjoy

 

No reply from OP, but if this happened to me (I’m sure I’ve had an incident or two involving broken glass, not sure I’ve experienced anything like the subject of this thread), I never bothered trying to filter out any loose shards that might have found their way into the beer—call me crazy, I’m just not a huge fan of internal bleeding. Down the drain it went.

 

That hole in the bottle looks like it was caused by hitting another bottle.

I witnessed an experience bartender pour whisky all over his bar because there was a hole in the bottle like the one pictured in the OPs post.

The bar was full and so was the dinning room. Clinking the neighboring bottle while placing it back on the shelf caused the hole, the poor bartender didn't have a clue until half a fifth of booze overflowed a shot glass. Manufacturering defects could have been a factor. Cheers.

 

I agree. That's why the small funky stubbie Belgian bottles have those distinctive neck ripples.