What went wrong??

[GrafVonJon]

I brewed up a porter from liquid malt extract.

After the usual fermenting period (10 days) I bottled it up. I added 80g caster sugar, dissolved in boiled water and cooled, to the bottling bucket. Then siphoned the beer on top and bottled. So the sugar should be evenly distributed.

It was conditioned 1 week warm and 2 cold.

I've been opening it all this week and it's lovely.

Then today, I opened a bottle and it went crazy! beer everywhere and huge amounts of fizz!
I just opened another straight after, and it's perfect.

What happened to that one bottle?

Toward the end of the bottling I used two 330ml bottles to get the last out of the bottling bucket. The exploding bottle was one of these. But then the other one that I opened after was also a small 330ml bottle (either the last or second-to-last bottled)... And this was fine.

Will the size of the bottle make a difference? They all have the same headspace between beer and bottle cap? Is there a reason why, if one of these small 330ml bottles was the 'last out' of the bottling bucket it would act like that?

I noticed that the beer (in the exploding bottle) tasting awfully sweet: I tipped the rest of the bottle away as it was too sweet to drink.
All I can think is that this bottle was the last bottle to be filled, and some charging sugar had settled out at the bottom.
Or maybe there was some trub that found it's way into the bottle??

Should I leave the last bits of beer next time I bottle? I can stand to loose 330ml in each batch if it would prevent this.

Cheers peeps,

GVJ

[OldSpeckledBadger]

Somehow you must have got too much priming sugar into it. To prevent this, dissolve the priming sugar in about 100mml water and bring to the boil. Cover and allow to cool. When cooled, pour it into the bottling bucket then run the beer in. That will be sufficient to ensure perfectly even mixing.

[trucker5774]

Somehow you must have got too much priming sugar into it. To prevent this, dissolve the priming sugar in about 100mml water and bring to the boil. Cover and allow to cool. When cooled, pour it into the bottling bucket then run the beer in. That will be sufficient to ensure perfectly even mixing.

It sounds like he did that, OSB. I can only guess there was a little settling of the sugar towards the end of the bottling which gave extra carbonation, or a little "dirt" in the bottle. Although it is a point of interest to know why, I wouldn't worry and just look forward to your next one down the hatch

[GrafVonJon]

I did, indeed, mix the sugar with water, boiled, and run the beer on top to mix it in.

I'll chalk it up to experience and continue. Opened 2 bottles since and they've been fine.
Never had a beer fizz over before, I'll just make sure I open them all over the sink from now on!

Annoyingly I had a mate round who'd come to sample the brews. Just had to be that one bottle I opened for him, didn't it!

Don't think he has a high regard for my homebrew now... It did taste awful.

[OldSpeckledBadger]

I did, indeed, mix the sugar with water, boiled, and run the beer on top to mix it in.

Then ignore what I wrote. I have no idea what went wrong.

[RichardG]

I had the same thing happen to me once. One bottle out of a batch of 30-odd blew it's contents all over the place on opening. No idea why; never happened before, and never happened since. Could be any number of reasons why it happened, but I'd forget it. It's 'one of those things' that happens sometimes.

[badgerdan]

It'll be down to that one bottle. I've only had one bottle explode out of all the bottles I've used and use carbonation drops so the amount is the same. If the bottle is slightly weak then it won't take much pressure and if it exploded when opening then it could be that the pressure you put on the cap was enough to then 'crack' it a little more.

I had a bottle crumble on me once when putting the cap on, so that one was obviously weak at the stem