A few weeks back I mentioned I'd had a bottle explode. It was a bottle of my Lilikoi Amber, and in 35+ batches this was the first time I'd had it happen. Well, now I've had it happen a second time, and with a different beer. One of the last remaining bottles of my Palolo Gold, which I brewed back in January, exploded. I didn't actually hear it happen, but I was snooping around in the basement, and I saw the evidence (shown in the picture above).
I put the rest of the Palolo Gold bottles in the fridge. I've been drinking them since the busted bottle, and they pour fine, with no sign of the gushing that started happening with the Lilikoi Ambers. So why did this bottle bust?
My thought is that it's a combination of time, temperature, and bottles. Seven months is a pretty long time for a beer to sit in bottles, unless it's a low-carbonation beer like a Barley Wine, and the temperature in the cellar is warm enough to promote vigorous fermentation. So pressure must have just kept building in that particular bottle. Why haven't other bottles exploded, and why don't the other bottles of Palolo Gold gush when I open them? Maybe that particular bottle got more than its fair share of priming sugar, and maybe the bottle itself was somehow flawed.
Which brings up another important point: both of the bottles I've had bust were re-used Kona Brewing bottles. I've noticed that Kona Brewing has changed their bottles recently, and I don't if the change relates to defects with the bottles, but I suppose it's possible.
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