Bottle Bomb

[robbop88]

Bottled my Irish Red 12 days ago. Final Gravity was stable and spot on. Filled 35x 12 oz bottles with crown caps and 5x 1 liter swing top bottles. After filling all my bottles, I realized that my first bottle was slightly underfilled (2-2.5 inches of headspace). I had no beer left in the bottling bucket to correct it so I just closed it up and put everything in boxes in a dark laundry room. 1 of the big swing top bottles cracked, the bottom fell out. The 12 oz bottles open and pour perfectly carbed.

Do you think some of my priming syrup stuck to the bottom of the bottling bucket for the first bottle?

Do you think it was too much headspace?

Bad luck?

…Or should I prepare for more?

[a10t2]

Head space won’t have anything to do with it. It could just have been a compromised bottle, or it could have been that the sugar wasn’t evenly dissolved and the first few bottles got more. If the last bottle filled is under-carbed, or the second bottle filled is over-carbed, you might have a problem. But I wouldn’t worry too much about one bottle breaking.

[nighthawk]

What does the bottle look like?

I’ve seen some pretty crappy bottle castings. Super thick on one side and super thin on the other. Could just be a bad bottle. Or one that has been bumped and weakened.

[robbop88]

An almost perfect oval fell out of the side of the bottle. It was pretty tight fitting in the box.

I put everything in the fridge. 12 oz are slightly overcarbed (too much head) but not gushing. Zero overflow. Pours well out of the fridge.

Haven’t opened a swingtop yet.

I think I let my syrup cool too long and it stuck to the bottom of my bucket so it didn’t all mix evenly. the rest of the carb seems uniform so hopefully it was just that first bottle had a crack or something. It broke within the first week which seems too soon for a traditional bottle bomb. this glass it pretty thick too.