So I get home last night after a full day of work plus an additional 3hrs of "restructuring" meetings afterwards and head to the basement to grab a bottle of homebrew to put in the fridge. To my surprise there was glass and beer all over the floor. Now I had hit terminal gravity on my apa, 1.011, and only used 3/4 cup priming sugar, but my batch was a little short of 5gallons. More like 4 gallons. I thought maybe too much priming sugar, so I cracked two more just to see how their carbonation was. I had the expected amount of carbonation, and another that wasn't a guhsher, but did foaam up some. So, in the intrest of science, I popped one more with no ill effects. Some of the bottles I used were recycles, old ones, that took a lot of elbow grease to get clean. I'm thinking individual infections here, but want to get some input from guys who have had bottle bombs from bottling before terminal gravity, too much priming sugar, batch and bottle infections. I just want to make sure this doesn't happen again. l
My first guess, assuming the extra foamy bottle tasted fine, would be unevenly distributed priming sugar.
It does sound like the priming sugar was not evenly distributed because multiple bottles are effected. As far as dirty bottles go, for really dirty bottles I soak in hot oxyclean and it works well, but even then there are a few with some crud at the bottom. I visually inspect the bottles before sanitizing them by holding them up to the light an looking down the neck. Usually find one or two that don't pass inspection.
I'd think some of the bottles would be undercarbed if the priming sugar wasn't mixed well. Is this the case? If all are well carbonated, I'd suspect an infected bottle. BTW, if you reuse a bottle that held a brett or bacteria beer, clean and sanitize very well. I've had no bottle bombs (in almost 26 years of homebrewing) but a few infected bottles. I can tell you that Jolly Pumpkin bugs are especially tenacious
Note that OP used 3/4 cup into 4 gallons. Rough conversion, that's about 5.25 ounces by weight in 4 gallons. Assuming residual CO2 at about 70F, we're talking about roughly 3.4 volumes CO2 (on average) in the bottles. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have any that seem undercarbonated, while some were clearly over.
My instincts: -It was at terminal gravity or close enough to do no major damage. -Probably not a bottle infection. These take a bit of time to show up. In my experience, it was something I began to notice ~a month after cracking my first bottle. The beer became excessively foamy, thin, and tasteless. That leaves something about the priming sugar. 3/4 cup in a 4 gallon batch is probably high. Plus, if others are right that it wasn't well mixed, you will see variation in carbonation. I suggest using a bottle priming calculator (tastybrew.com has a good one) and weighing your sugar.
This would happen if the sugar was mixed 'almost' well enough. Good point. And I've read that standard American beer bottles are not designed to handle more than 3 volumes, even new, let alone recycled several times.
This was actually the first batch I ever had that I stirred the beer up after adding it to the priming sugar in the boottling bucket. Next time I will bring my sugar to beer ratio down when priming though. On the other side I have been prompted to drink this beer up quick, and its my best batch so far.
