Exploding Dark Lord

I was wondering who got the "exploding" bottle.....congrats

 

Aw man, first green apple now exploding bottles? The Dark Lord haters are gonna have a field day

 

GREEN APPLE BOMBS!!!

 

Were you cellaring them in your attic?

 

INFECTION!!!!!!!

 

I always wanted to try sour dark lord. What would that make it? 20%abv?

 

If it exploded (even being next to a heater) that is cause for concern...

 

Did it colllapse on the base? yeah, I feel your pain. Don't ask...

 

we need pics!

 

You're right, if you are keeping beer next to a heater I am concerned about your decision making.

 

Hmmm all mine are in a box together still, in my closet for the time being, and all i can picture is 1 of them exploding and setting the rest off in a chain reaction that would destroy half my apartment complex.

 

Doesn't this same thread get made every year?

 

I believe so as I had 2 bottles explode in 07...blew out the bottoms.

 

i think its awesome you posted this, good information. tons of people read this thread with only a few posting. im sure you helped many people. (i know id sure like this information if i ha a dark lord)

btw in situations like this is the fridge the best option?

 

Just want to throw some beer-geek-turned-pro-brewer knowledge into the mix here...

So, we've rated some 4000+ beers (the three of us Pipeworkers together) plus all the 10's of thousands of other bottles we've probably consumed in the process and I can't remember any bottles exploding in my cellar that weren't infected or done with fruit (i.e. still had some potential for fermentation).

Well, we learned very quickly, within the first week of distributing our own beer, that there seems be some acceptable bottle breakage in the beer industry that isn't exactly front-page news. We found that 1 out of 2000 or so bottles were having issue. We knew there was no way an infection would take hold like that and bust bottles that quickly, there wasn't anything left in the beer to ferment normally anyway, and the carb levels were all well within manufacturer recommended specs.

We immediately contacted the manufacturer about the problem and were told that there is an expected small percentage of bottle breakage due to defects in the glass manufacturing that just can't be weeded out. Large packaging breweries (Labatt for instance) has a bottle break on the line every 12 seconds due to this type of problem. So... having open, stored, drank and rated 10's of thousands of beer and not seen this problem it was somewhat confusing...

Those minor defects, combined with a finicky capper or general stress from shipping/handling the bottles (both empty, and full, to the distributor and then to the stores) can cause bottles to fracture at anytime, usually after a temperature (pressure) change.

Scared the crap out of us since we never came across it as raters (vocal drinkers). However, I guess it's just part of the beer industry. So the point is, no reason to rush to judgement about DL being infected, it could simply be a defective bottle, which is what it sounds like with the description of the break, clean at the neck?