BeerBorg

I bottled an Irish Red Stout (from extract) Saturday morning. I used glass pry-off bottles and capped them well. Seven of the 21 bottles I used the 3/4 tsp. sugar requirement I found on a chart here at the Borg. The remaining bottles I used a 1/2 tsp., simply because I don't need overly carbonated beer.

HELP ~ what d I need to do with the rest of the bottles? They are currently in a location that I do not want any more bombs. They are sitting in a gym locker in our utility room.


EDIT: If you remember, I had some trouble with my first batch, in the quart PET's. I have burped them twice since they began conditioning about 5 weeks ago and still one exploded this morning. I put the appropriate amount of sugar in each bottle. I am just going to cut those recommendations in half here on out. I'm not into the same level of carbonation that others might enjoy. However, I don't want it flat. I guess that's why they have starter kits. I get to practice all facets with these kits and experiment with flavor, figuring out this whole process before jumping to grains.

So I guess, thanks for reading and letting me work it out outloud. LOL Have a great week. Carry on....

2-2.25g/12oz bottle, which loosely translates to 0.5tsp, is what I always shot for back before I started doing priming in the bottling bucket, but .75tsp is certainly not outside the range. If you are getting bottle bombs with this level of priming sugar (which is what I think I'm reading), I might suggest that there is a different problem. Are you sure that fermentation is complete at the point of bottling? How long were things in the fermenter? How much (and what) yeast was used? What is your sanitation process? Any tidbits of info you can provide will help to diagnose the issue.

All the questions Swen asked can help see if there is something else going on.
The only thing I can add at this point is a trick I learned. I would put all my bottles in six pack carriers and then place those in a beer case box lined with a garbage bag and fold the top of the bag over the bottles. That way if one went off all was contained. I'd remove the non broken bottles and rinse them off and move them to new carriers into another lined box and throw away the other garbage bag containing the mess. I may or may not have a picture of glass embedded in the ceiling of the spare bedroom prior to learning this trick.

What busted was a PET bottle I used for bottling my very first batch. It was a BD extract Pilsner. It fermented three weeks and I’ve burped them twice the five weeks they’ve been conditioning. They drink just fine, after a week in the fridge, although I’m not a Pilsner fan. I’m freaky clean when it comes to santizing & cleaning (Berryman has read a bit about my cleaning process) these PET bottles were quarts.
The glass bottles were fine. The glass & plastic were in same locker. It took a bit to find the culprit.
I think I’ll cut the recommended sugar in half.


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You should not be able to explode a PET bottle easily. The folks above are right, either there is some kind of bottle infection, or your tsp's were TBSP's, or the beer really wasn't done fermenting.

I would personally suggest that you *totally avoid glass* until you are sure you know why this happened. Because glass explodes a lot more easily and when it does it's way more nasty.