How to avoid bottle bombs - ageing a well-carbonated beer

[TimT]

I've got a little brewing dilemma, pretty much expressed in the title here. I've got a strong honey dandelion porter which I bottled almost three weeks ago which is definitely coming into its own now. It was originally intended to pair with another honey brew - a mead, to which I've added some porter wort (worter?): basically, two braggots, one tilting to the 'malt' side, the other tilting to the 'honey' side.

Problem is the mead is definitely going to have to age.

The porter, in the meantime, is frisky and carbonated and ready to drink straightaway. I'd be happy to drink it straightaway too but I think it could actually benefit from some ageing, even a spot of oxidisation. Also, the dandelion root taste in it is strong - what I intended, it gives the drink its character - but could probably benefit from some mellowing, which I guess it should do with age.

Only thing is, I'm worried in the meantime it'll turn into little bottle bombs.

So how do I avoid this? If I stick the bottles in the fridge for a week or so I'm sure I could make the yeast go dormant, but they can't stay in there forever - the fridge is crowded as it is - and when I take 'em out again the yeast will just wake up again.

Could I perhaps burp the bottles to let off excess CO2 and then cap them immediately? (Or flip the caps off and let them sit open for, say, 30 seconds if that is a good period?) Or a combination of burping the bottles and popping them in the fridge afterwards?

(As a side benefit, during the burping I could actually take advantage to add another spice - a little cinnamon or cloves, perhaps?)

UPDATE: The alcohol content is probably around 9 per cent - impossible to calculate with 100 per cent accuracy though due to the successive additions of honey during fermentation.

 

[oakburner]

I had a similar problem last year with a choc vanilla porter ..... Turned out nice but is benefiting from aging..... Had a block of 70% cocoa in the boil... And a vanilla bean pod .... I bottled and intentionally under primed because I only wanted around 2vol CO2......But..For some reason they were explosively carbonated and I even lost a couple after some really hot days back in late November . First exploding bottles I've had since my bad old days of kit brewing in the 90's.....
Ended up refrigerating then opening and immediately recapping all of them with as little disturbance as possible....seems to have done the trick.....

 

[TimT]

Excellent, thanks for the feedback. Anyone else had a similar experience?

In this case previous bottles had been a tad underprimed - I'm having problems getting my bulk carbonation regime down pat, so I had to add a bit more sugar this time. They began carbonating pretty much straightaway.

 

[Yeastfridge]

Did you bottle them before they'd reached terminal (stable, final) gravity? If so, depending on how much extra fermentation sugar is in there, you might have a hard time burping them enough. In this case, and if you do want to oxidise the brew, hypothetically you could tip them all back into a fermenter, let them finish fermenting and then rebottle them all again. Never tried it before but I'm sure you'd get some quick oxidation but potentially top much...

 

[Yeastfridge]

Otherwise you're kinda screwed. If it reached final gravity before you bottled it shouldn't continue to carbonate further than how it is now. You could also fridge them all which would slow down the ageing very considerably but would stop the froth

 

[Yeastfridge]

Also, on a side note Tim, did you once do some experimenting with some sourdough starter to ferment sours? I've been doing it to sour some saisons and while it goes quite slowly it's been working a treat!

 

[TimT]

Yeah pretty sure it had done fermenting. Though in my experience there's usually a residual fermentation tail that happens - maybe something to do with the unfermentable malt sugars breaking down over time into fermentable sugars, maybe something to do with the yeast developing in weird ways - so that after a few months everything turns into a bottle bomb.

 

[TimT]

Hey, great to hear about the sourdough experiment! I'm going to try it sometime, might need to set aside one of my fermenters for the 'sourdough' culture.

 

[Yob]

A good as place as any to put it..

Just WITNESSED my first bottle bomb go off..

fortunately I was on the other side of the brewery.. and no it wasnt one of mine.. given to me to try, as is often the case, they get set aside awaiting the right time as fridge space is a premium..

man that shit is scary.. and folks woder why Im waving the rant flag recently about competition entries and the safety of the stewards as a priority and the fact we just dont know the quality of the bottles we handle.. I digress...

So, time to introduce a new protection plan.. dedicate an esky to live under the bench and wrap them all in gladwrap.. not sure why I hadnt already done that TBH..

freakin scary stuff, Im not even sure where the neck ended up :blink:

 

[Grott]

That is scary, you don't really think about it when someone gives you a bottle or two. An awakening to heed. Would PET bottles be the preferred entry to comps? Or just not practicable.

 

[madpierre06]

Really shows the need for diligence when checking F.G.'s and such. Thanks for the reminder.

 

[Yob]

That is scary, you don't really think about it when someone gives you a bottle or two. An awakening to heed. Would PET bottles be the preferred entry to comps? Or just not practicable.

Yes, I'm pushing this point quite hard at the moment, (as in a move to PET and gladwrapping the necks of glass entries)

in my opinion, it's a matter of when, not if, someone gets hurt at a comp. I for one will be supplying safety glasses to stewards, if they choose not to wear them...

Ed: shit will hit the fan when somebody gets seriously hurt at a comp too.

 

[Grainer]

A good as place as any to put it..

Just WITNESSED my first bottle bomb go off..

fortunately I was on the other side of the brewery.. and no it wasnt one of mine.. given to me to try, as is often the case, they get set aside awaiting the right time as fridge space is a premium..

man that shit is scary.. and folks woder why Im waving the rant flag recently about competition entries and the safety of the stewards as a priority and the fact we just dont know the quality of the bottles we handle.. I digress...

So, time to introduce a new protection plan.. dedicate an esky to live under the bench and wrap them all in gladwrap.. not sure why I hadnt already done that TBH..

freakin scary stuff, Im not even sure where the neck ended up :blink:

BBomb.JPG

The neck usually ends up about 5-6m away...OMG :unsure:

 

[Mardoo]

- so that after a few months everything turns into a bottle bomb.

That sounds like wild yeast…which in your case is much more likely to be intentional than not.