Exploding bottles

[stoney]

I made a bunch of rootbeer a few weeks ago, and it's pretty damn good. I went down to the basement yesterday to grab a few more bottles for the fridge and 5 had exploded (or were damaged in the initial explosion.

Has anybody had this happen before? How do I prevent this kind of detonation going forward? Wifey likes the rootbeer, so I want to keep making it.

[dante]

Infection? Any time I've heard of beer bottles exploding (or carboys erupting) it's due to an infection somewhere....

[stoney]

The Rootbeer is hyper carbonated. To the extent that when I pop a top, it erupts. Is there a way to stop the carbonation at a certain point?

[dante]

How did you carbonate? Yeast+sugar? Any off-flavors?

If it's just overactive yeast, I'd say throw everything that's left into a refrigerator somewhere to stop them from going to town, but from the sound of it it still sounds like an infected batch...

[stevew]

it's a higher power telling you to invest in a still.....

[stoney]

How did you carbonate? Yeast+sugar? Any off-flavors?

If it's just overactive yeast, I'd say throw everything that's left into a refrigerator somewhere to stop them from going to town, but from the sound of it it still sounds like an infected batch...

Carbonation is sugar and yeast. Although thinking about it, I followed the guy at the brew store's suggestion to just use a whole packet of yeast. the instructions were for 50% of that amount, but he said to go all in.
The batch tastes like root beer and there seem to be no ill effects from infected content. I've got everything in a fridge already, so hopefully that helps. I did notice that the tops seem to be pushing up at the center a bit. It's only the bottles that were not in the fridge though.

Oh well. I picked up a mini fridge from Nick this afternoon, so I can just keep the remainder in the fridge until I finish the batch.

[skyst3alth]

Yeah likely overcarbed. As a last ditch effort you could always pop the tops, then re-cap them (with sanitized tops) right away. Although you could end up with undercarbed beer. Better than cleaning up a mess in your fridge though.

[Pesqueeb]

It's my understanding that the only way to stop carbonation in sodas is to stick them in the fridge. There is just so much sugar in a soda that the yeast is never going to stop. I once made 3 cases of cranberry soda in anticipation of Thanksgiving one year when we were still in Washington. Wife and I went to Hawaii for a couple days, came home, and the basement looked like the Amityville horror house. All three cases looked like someone had dropped a grenade in them, shards of glass were in every single corner of the basement, and gallons of red, sticky soda were on the shelving, walls and floor. Damn what a mess that was. IIRC only like 6 or 7 bottles survived and they all erupted like Old Faithful when I opened them. I've never made soda again.

/coolstorybro.

[dante]

Carbonation is sugar and yeast. Although thinking about it, I followed the guy at the brew store's suggestion to just use a whole packet of yeast. the instructions were for 50% of that amount, but he said to go all in.
The batch tastes like root beer and there seem to be no ill effects from infected content. I've got everything in a fridge already, so hopefully that helps. I did notice that the tops seem to be pushing up at the center a bit. It's only the bottles that were not in the fridge though.

Oh well. I picked up a mini fridge from Nick this afternoon, so I can just keep the remainder in the fridge until I finish the batch.

... How much sugar was in the rootbeer to begin with? When carb'ing beer all of the residual sugar is gone, so all the yeast have is the small amount of sugar that you put in to bottle. With a sugary soda, I'd imagine that there'd be PLENTY of sugar for yeast to go wild on.

Only thing I can imagine would be to wait till they're carbonated to the level you want, and immediately get them into a fridge to stop the yeast from doing their thing.

[stoney]

It's my understanding that the only way to stop carbonation in sodas is to stick them in the fridge. There is just so much sugar in a soda that the yeast is never going to stop. I once made 3 cases of cranberry soda in anticipation of Thanksgiving one year when we were still in Washington. Wife and I went to Hawaii for a couple days, came home, and the basement looked like the Amityville horror house. All three cases looked like someone had dropped a grenade in them, shards of glass were in every single corner of the basement, and gallons of red, sticky soda were on the shelving, walls and floor. Damn what a mess that was. IIRC only like 6 or 7 bottles survived and they all erupted like Old Faithful when I opened them. I've never made soda again.

/coolstorybro.

That's awesome.