I just opened one of my delicious IPAs and there was a ton of pressure under the cap that resulted in a beer shower. There was nice 12" geyser of foamy beer that shot up and got everywhere. What a waste of a nice home brew. My question is - why would one bottle do this and not another? I have had 3 other bottles and they did not blow. I carefully opened another (in the sink) after I cleaned up my mess and it was fine. What gives?

How did you prime your beer? Did you add the priming sugar to the entire batch or did you add it to each bottle individually? How much sugar or dme did you add? If you did it individually, perhaps you added too much to one of the bottles.

I used 5 oz. of dextrose for the entire 5 gallon batch and mixed in thoroughly during transfer to bottling bucket. No individually added priming sugar in this case. That is why I was curious as to why it happened in one bottle and not another. I did see some bits of hop that made it into the bottle during my cleanup. Wonder if that would have anything to do with it?

Posibly even a little chunk of sugar remained that way and just happend to fall in that one beer

Almost every batch I bottled had one or two of these. I guess it's just part of the excitement . Usually a heck of a mess, though. One time I had one blow so violently when I opened it that I never found the cap and had to clean beer off the ceiling, walls, dog, etc.

I used to have similar bottle to bottle variation in carbonation levels.

I stopped having this problem after I adopted a different bottling strategy. Now I simply transfer the beer onto the priming solution and then wait 2-3 hours before actually bottling. This seems to allow the sugar to properly diffuse throughout the solution.

Cheers,

Scott

Agree, coming from the wine making side this is something that is practiced any time we make an adjustment or change always give it a couple hours. another little stir a few hours later makes a big difrance.

Great - I'm taking a few bottles with me to a local home brewing club meeting/tasting/competition tonight. I hope things goes off WITHOUT a bang.