My homebrew experience - Scuba gear involved

[kellzey]

About 10 years ago, I got into homebrewing of beer. Started of with a Mr. Beer kit given as a gift, and evolved into full-blown mashing process with roasted grains and brewing batches of either 5 or 10-gallons.

I got pretty good, and even won a third-place ribbon in the State Fair for one of my Stout recipes.

Anyways... I decided to try sparkling hard cider one year.

I was able to obtain some fresh-squeezed apple juice,fresh champagne yeast, and went through the process of fermentation, clarification, etc. and needed to finish off with some pasteurization for stabilization.

For those that haven't pasteurized, it involves taking the finished bottle, already capped and carbonated with last minute sugar addition, and placing them in a large pot of water (up to the top of the neck), slowly bringing the water in the pot up to 160 degree temperature, and holding for X minutes, before cooling.

So I have this HUGE pot sitting on the stove top with something like 18 bottles of bottled cider coming up to temp. I hit my temperature mark, and decided to go watch some TV while it sits at the 160 degree mark and pasteurizes.

About 7 or 8 minutes into it, I hear total HELL in the kitchen. Sounds like someone is firing off M80s. I peak around the corner and find that the bottles are exploding... and hot cider is errupting like a volcano out of the pot and all over the kitchen.

I soon realize that the caps AREN'T blowing off, but rather the glass bottles are bursting in the middle of the neck and are shooting off like little missiles.

Fearing for my face and eyes, and trying to put an end the carnage, I go and grab my Scuba mask, and grab a trashcan lid from outside to act as a shield. I defensively work my way into the kitchen and manage to get the pot off the heat.

When it was all said and done, only 6 of the 18 bottles remained.

In reviewing my brewing procedure I later found I had added double the sugar to the fermented cider for the final carbonation process, so the bottles were overcarbonated to begin with. Adding heat, only increased the pressure and ended in the ultimate bottle failure.

It took weeks to get the cider out of all the nooks and crannies in my condo. It was in the oven, under the oven, in the silverware drawer, in the light fixture on the ceiling of the kitchen... literally everywhere.

Good times, good times!

[RobustBrad]

Man that's hilarious. It's too bad no one snapped a picture of you in the scuba mask using the garbage lid as a shield.

Funny as hell.

Cheers,
Brad

[ekengland07]

WOW! Thanks for posting that story. I'll have to share it with my homebrew buddies. I've had one bottle bomb out of the 15+ batches I've made and I'm pretty sure it was just a weak bottle. But yeah, blew the neck off and the cap is still attached (I kept it). I never realized how tightly they are on there.

[shunoshi]

I've only had one bottle bomb myself in my brewing history. Funny enough, it was a German hard cider. It went off in the middle of the night and actually woke me from a dead sleep.

[96Brigadier]

When I was a kid my grandparents used to make ginger beer. One summer they were off at their trailer on the coast and my parents were checking on their apartment. We all went over there, upon opening the door we found glass embedded in the walls, the ceiling, etc. They had a batch of ginger beer in the closet by the door and half the bottles had exploded. I would have hated to been around when that happened, there was glass embedded in everything.

[Grammaton]

Funny!

I have a friend who had ten gallons of wine explode in the dead of night. Blew the tops off the containers and sprayed the room.
I'll stick to buying my beer and wine.

[fiddlegrin]

Hahaahaaahaahaahaaaahaahaahahaaaa!!!

That is freakin classic Karl!!!

Especially dig the garbage can lid shield

Thanks for sharing and giving us all a great belly laugh!


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