Exploding bottles

10 Barrel Brewing released Swill last summer, and bottles were popping all over the Northwest. It had to do with the amount of carbonation naturally increasing after bottling. You had bottle shops removing bottles in haz-mat bags. Damn shame!

 

68 storing temp didn't cause this explosion. Not all of us have temp controlled cellars or second fridges to store our beer. That said, it probably wouldn't have exploded at 50 or lower. If it was yeast eating leftover sugar than it probably would have gone much sooner, so I don't think that is likely. An infection is the most likely culprit to me.

 

I had a cork from a cellared Berliner Weisse shoot right off the bottle as soon as I undid the metal cage this past weekend. Never had that happen before. Definitely took me by surprise.

 

Yes, but only with an extra pale ale that I home brewed. Some of the bottles were infected due to poor sanitation practices, and it was like handling grenades! Can't imaging what that shit would do to your face if you were reading the label or something, and one of them blew

 

I remember a thread about Stone IRS bottle(s) exploding, few months ago. They are called "bombers" for a reason.

 

This does seem awful warm to me to be storing beer at. I usually store mine no more then 50 degrees. Don't get your panties in a bundle, im just saying it seems a bit warm to store beer at.

 

68 degree is hardly room temperature. Could be a hell of a lot warmer!

 

Awesome.

 

Is this the new BA pissing contest? I keep my beer at 68F. That is way too warm. I won't store mine above 65F. Really? Beer falls off a cliff if stored above 60F. I won't drink beer which has been stored for more than 5 minutes above 55F. That is absurd. I turned my basement into a walk in refrigerator. All beer is stored at 48F.

I have never seen a bottle shop or liquor store which does not keep almost all of their beer stored at room temperature. Not to mention unrefrigerated warehouses for distributors or lack of temperature control while shipping. People seem to be confusing ideal cellar temperature with unsafe storage temperature.

 

One time I put a bomber in the freezer to quick-chill it. Then I forgot about it. Next day I opened the freezer, shards of brown glass everywhere, had to take everything out of the freezer and clean out all the glass. Never forgetting a beer in the freezer again.

 

As the more sensible posters have mentioned, this does happen from time to time. The likely culprits are excess carbonation from unexpected bottle conditioning (as a result of excess sugar, overactive yeast, or infection) or a flawed glass bottle. Given the lack of reports of infection or a rash of bottles exploding, flawed glass is the likely culprit.

As some have stated, storing beer at 68F instead of a lower temperature would increase the speed with which the beer aged. Unless the beer was significantly warmer, resulting in a significant increase in bottle pressure, it should not have had a direct impact on the breakage. It could have slightly sped up the process if a result of increased carbonation due to continuing fermentation in the bottle, but it would have happened eventually if this was the issue.

 

was this bottle conditioned?