Brooke and I were watching “House, M.D.” on Friday night in the office after Meg went to bed when we heard a loud “pop.” Not so much a “pop” as much as a “who’s shooting at us?!”
Well, turns out one of Brooke’s Hard Apple Cider bottles continued fermenting to the point where it generated enough CO2 to explode all over our dining room. It sent glass flying across the room, including 8 ft in the air where it caught a nice, large shard in the curtains (pictured above). We found small bits of glass spread throughout the room.
The Cider is now sitting outside in our metal trash can (sans trash, of course), where it will be a bit…safer…for everyone involved. 🙂
We had opened up some of the stuff last Wednesday night and I noted that it had lost some of the sweetness it had a few weeks ago, and the carbonation had increased. The champagne yeast, apparently, is more hearty than we’d initially thought. That, or the brown sugar Brooke added to “prime” the cider for bottling ended up being more than was necessary.
Either way, if you have a bottle of our cider sitting in your fridge, I’d recommend you open it and drink it immediately. And do it over a sink. It can get messy. 🙂
may need to refine the recipe a bit?? 😉
More than likely, we’ll include potassium sorbate next time when we bottle. That chemical “shuts down” the yeast so they can’t ferment anymore. The cider had enough carbonation at bottling anyway, so it really didn’t need much more. So yes, there will be some…”refinement.” 🙂
at least no one was in the room and hurt!
This is very true. Meg had been “playing” with some of those bottles a few weeks ago, so believe you me, we will be quite a bit more careful in the future!
I keep them on the main floor (during winter) for a week after bottling to allow the yeast to carbonate the beer more effectively, so in the summer, it won’t really be an issue – we can keep them down in the basement. But yeah, next winter, we’ll just put a heavy blanket over them for that week, likely. Should be enough to prevent any shards from flying all that far!
But, you know, goal should probably be to not having shards of flying glass at all!!! Go for the chemical that shuts down the fermentation when you bottle. That sounds safe!
found this over the weekend…http://www.bullfalls-homebrewers.org/
didn’t know they had clubs for this sort of thing
Oh yeah! I knew they had them, but I’ve never investigated any around here. I’m sure there’s probably one near me, but I don’t think our abilities warrant joining a club quite yet. And it’s not like we really have time to attend meetings. But eventually, I’d be all over something like this. Thanks for sharing!