Sometimes I brew my own ber/wine. I’ve been doing it for years but that doesn’t mean I know exactly what the hell I’m doing.
On wednesday I decided to make some cranberry wine. I use OZTOPS which is a quick-n-dirty way to make wine which is actually half way decent. I bought a 64oz bottle of juice at the dollar store, poured it, yeast, and some sugar into a 2 litter bottle, put the cap on and stored it in the cupboard. Usually after 24 hours the juice ferments and the bottle gets very tight full of gas. And the valve on the Oztop pops up.
Last night I checked it and found that the juice was not fermenting. The juice had no presevatives in it, so I know that wasn’t the cause. So I reopened the bottle and sprinkled in a different kind of yeast. Closed the top (I did not shake the bottle) and put it back in the cupboard. About 2 minutes later I hear this very strange noise coming out of the cupboard. I look at the bottle and it looks like the juice was boiling!:eek: It was going nuts! And the bottle was actually shaking!:eek: I ran the bottle outside saying “this suckers gonna blow!”
And blow it did! The cap exploded off and flew over 8 feet straight up into the air. Then the juice flew straight up out of the bottle like a violent volcano! It was a magnificent sight! I hope this stuff doesn’t hurt my lawn.
But my question is, what the hell happened? There was obviously some kind of immediate chemical reaction here…but what?
This has never happened before. And the yeast I use was just plain old wine yeast, nothing special. Any clues?
Or the fermentation did occur, but the CO2 stayed in solution until you added the yeast. Then the CO2-saturated solution got into a chain reaction. Drop sugar into a can of soda and you’ll see something similar, but not nearly as violent.
Just a guess.
The original stuck fermentation was likely a result of using cranberry juice. Even though it had no perservitives in it there are acids (or is it enzymes?) in cran juice that naturually inhibit yeast growth, this is why cran juice is reccomended to help women prevent urinary tract infections, which are caused by types of wild yeast. When I make cranberry mead I don’t add the juice until after I’ve racked it into secondary fermentation for that very reason.
As for the bottle bomb that’s a little harder to explain. I can easily see how this combination could create a bottle bomb on a slightly longer timeline - bottled cran juice typically has a fair bit of corn syrup added for sweetness, plus the sugar you added and a double dose of dry wine yeast in active fermentation could easily build up too much pressure for your bottle to handle. If I sealed that combonation in a beer bottle with standard caps I’d expect an explosion inside of an hour since pressure will build up very fast once that yeast gets going. Maybe there was something wrong with the oztop? If it’s pressure release valves got gunked or jammed somehow when you put it back on I could see this happening. If your second yeast strain was more resistant to cranberry enzymes than the first and was able to start in on all that yummy corn syrup and sugar right away then it’s possible that it could blow a sealed bottled after only a few minutes of fermentation.
On preview, what FranticMad said is also plausible, the question is did the juice smell at all alcholic when you opened it the first time? What about when it exploded?
The juice smelled slightly alcoholic.
I think it’s possible the Oztop was messed up, though I cleaned it before use.
I understand that fermented beverages can explode like this, it even says so in the Oztop directions.
I just don’t understand how all this happened in under 5 minutes of adding a different yeast. I remember as a kid making a form of “fireworks” using baking soda, but it was nothing like this.
I can’t exaterate how spectacular the explosion was. I’m almost 6’1 and the cap flew up over 2 feet above my head! (bottle was on level ground) and then the juice sprayed up to my chest level.
Good thing I ran outside with it or my wife would be on these boards talking about how she was arrested for strangling her husband!
Oh yeah. I was using the “high pressure” Oztop because I wanted it to be more of a sparking wine. Maybe that contributed to it. (there are 3 levels of tops, low, medium, and high pressure).