Comments on: 5 Home Brewing Tips to Avoid the Dreaded Bottle Bomb

By: Tesilential

Tesilential — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 21:14:26 +0000

^^^ thats really inaccurate. My 1.05 brews finish at 1.01 or below. An FG of 1.018 is very high and expected for big beers (1.07+) like some stouts, porters, or barleywines. Lots of crystal malt will raise FG as well.

You need to take a hydrometer sample, refractometers are for brewday, they are MUCH less accurate after fermentation has begun.

By: GregK

GregK — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:07:07 +0000

Great article. I had my share of bottle bombs when I started brewing.

One time I gave a bottle of stout to an attorney who was working with us on one project. A couple months later he called to tell me it has exploded on his desk! Yikes!

Anyway, the other thing to note is that you can be sure the beer is finished fermenting if you check the gravity and (1) it’s close to your target final gravity, and (2) it stays there for three days.

The trouble is that all that goofing around with the hydrometer is a mess and might introduce contaminants into your beer — which is a great reason to get a refractometer. You only need a drop or two to get your gravity. I recently found one on eBay for about $25.

One other tip from “Homebrewing for Dummies.” You can get a decent guess at what your final gravity should be by knocking off the 1 and multiplying it by .35, then adding the 1 back on.

So if your O.G. is 1.050, multiply 0.05 by 0.35 to get .0175. Your final gravity should be in the neighborhood of 1.018.

By: Scott-TheBrewClub

Scott-TheBrewClub — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:25:42 +0000

Good article. As someone just getting into home brewing, the concept of ‘bottle bomb’ is one I’d like to avoid!

By: Beantown Brews

Beantown Brews — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:07:12 +0000

I think making sure that you adequately prime your bottles and proper storage are probably the biggest points to consider. Great stuff.

By: Brewologist

Brewologist — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:13:29 +0000

Very good advice! Helpful tips. Fortunately I’ve never experienced bottle failure, but I once had my old bucket fermenter blow it’s lid and spew hops and wort all over the wall. That bucket had a good seal, no leaking CO2 there. Hehe.

I’ve been close though. I noticed the caps on bottles from one batch of beer starting to rise up, a sure sign of too much preasure in the bottle. I knew that batch was a goner, so I just opened them up and poured them out. The beer did foam out of the bottles like crazy upon removing the caps.

Now I leave a minimum of two weeks for my lower gravity ales to ferment, and after about 10 days in the bottles I’ll chill them to halt the carbonation process. Longer in the fermenter and proper priming measurement are critical to avoiding exploding bottles!

By: BrewToppers

BrewToppers — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 07:47:17 +0000

Great article! I think I’ve been guilty a few times not letting my beer completely ferment. My next brew I’m going to be a bit more meticulous about these things!