Bottle bombs?

[andy6026]

So I made an error on my very first batch that is currently in the process of bottle conditioning:

In the process of racking from the fermenter to the bottling bucket I forget to put the priming sugar in first. So I added it after the beer was all in, and then I gave it a bit of a stir... with my racking cane - the only sanitized tool I had on hand that was long enough. You should have seen me take a regular table spoon out of the drawer and then look at the bottling bucket and notice that at best I'd be able to stir the top 3-4 inches.

Needless to say, the racking cane doesn't have much of width to give it much of a stir. In retrospective I should have sanitized my long spoon, but the territory of 'shoulda', 'coulda', 'woulda' is long past for this batch.

Am I likely to end up with a dozen bottle bombs on the one hand and a bunch of flat beer on the other?

When bottles explode is it flying shrapnel everywhere or is it a little more tame than that?

oh, and I used 2.5 cups of table sugar for a 6 gallon Pale Ale, in 500ml glass bottles (16 ounces?). I bottled on Saturday, so they've been ticking away for 4 days.

uh oh - I've just read on a different priming sugar calculator than the one I used when bottling that I may have used more than twice as much sugar as I should have. I guess some quick advice would be appreciated. Leave 'em, stick 'em in the fridge, or start opening a couple in order to...?

 

[andy6026]

ok, I see my error in the amount of sugar - I misread and put the equivalent of cups as should have been ounces of sugar.

My god I'm thus far really really terrible at this. Good thing I read that thread on 'ways you screwed up and the beer turned out fine.'

So... I've got two batches, 6 gallons each, bottle conditioning since Friday/Saturday, that each have 2.5 cups of table sugar in them, in 500ml glass bottles.

Are these destined to explode if I don't do something? I've got a two hour window in the morning whereby I can sort out this problem.

It's funny, I thought that was a lot of sugar at the time...

 

[DonutMuncher]

Are you saying you used 2.5 cups of table sugar per 6 gallon batch? I believe 1 cup of sugar is about 8 ounces (may have to check that), so 2.5 cups of table sugar would be approx. 20 ounces.

If that's the case, that is bad news and most likely will result in bottle bombs. I think you would typically want around 5 ounces of table sugar for a batch of Pale Ale.

 

[andy6026]

yep, that's what I did. Not proud of it, but I won't lie.

I just opened one that was bottled 5 days ago and it fizzed over and filled half my glass with foam.

It's warm beer but tastes pretty good.

I'm going to cold crash these in the morning (if they last that long) and throw a party for the neighborhood this weekend.

 

[andy6026]

If I release the caps and recap, how much time will that buy?

 

[DonutMuncher]

Sorry to hear Getting them cold fast and drinking them soon is one way to avoid the bottle bombs. Unfortunately you won't get the advantages of bottle conditioning (clean tasting beer, even carbonation).

I am no expert on this, but you might be able to open the bottles periodically to release carbonation, and then re-cap them. You could do this a few times to release the pressure, and eventually enough of the sugar should be eaten up by the yeast that they won't explode. However, this might be more trouble than it's worth for you, especially if the beers uncontrollably foam out when you uncap them now.

 

[andy6026]

awe man. This is disappointing. It's my own fault, of course. I'm guessing I didn't have my glasses on when I was reading the chart. Yeah, I'll blame it on that.

Ok, I know what I'm doing in the morning. I've put a bunch of ice packs in the freezer. I've got lots of bottle caps on hand. I'm having a reunion with some old friends the first week of May and was hoping to showcase my first two batches. Unfortunately my third won't be ready by then.

Maybe I'll try recapping periodically and keeping them as cold as possible. I wonder if they'll last the month. As much as I don't want to dump these batches, I also don't want to lose the bottles. They're all european imports and when I bought them filled they cost $3.00-3.50 each.

At least I've realized the mistake now and not when there's a huge mess.

And come to think of it... it's lucky I stirred with the auto-siphon or I wouldn't have even been thinking about it enough to check what I'd done.

 

[andy6026]

I'm not waiting till morning... its 4am, uncapping and re-capping now.

Funnily enough, the batch I poured the sugar in after and stirred with the racking cane, I openned one and it's barely carbed at all. I imagine there's a few bottles in the batch that have tons of sugar while the rest doesn't have much at all.

 

[DonutMuncher]

Probably a good idea I think you may be able to salvage these beers for your May celebration. You might even be able to just slightly/gently open each cap a little to release pressure, and re-cap it again, without having to burn through new bottle caps. I have never tried that though.

As far as your other batch, yeah.. as you already know, adding priming sugar to the bottling bucket after already adding the beer could mean you have uneven carbonation. I suspect that is the case given you had to try and stir with a racking cane. Also, hopefully you stirred gently with the racking cane when trying to mix in the sugar, to minimize oxidation risks to the beer.

Maybe someone with more insight can comment on how often you should uncap/recap to minimize bottle bomb chances. It's a matter of how fast the yeast are releasing CO2 in bottles that have about 4x as much sugar as they should.

 

[andy6026]

I'm almost finished recapping the first batch - I have to leave them foaming out in the sink for a few minutes before re-capping. I think they're salvageable. It's a shame because even warm, the dark ale batch tastes pretty good. The other batch of which I only opened one bottle and it wasn't carbonated at all tastes quite terrible to be honest.

Once these are all recapped I'll get them cold and then ask later for advice on if/when I should recap them again.

I'm laughing... at myself.

Thanks for the quick advice.

 

[grem135]

We all live and learn..hopefully lol. I read somewhere on here that you can try putting a quarter on top of the caps when opening so the caps dont get bent then just recap using the same one. Is it worth trying... dunno.
Good luck and brew on!