Dry hopping can lead to exploding bottles

[gr_baker]

Some breweries in the US that dry hop and bottle condition have been having exploding bottles. It seems that hops contain alpha and beta amalyse and can reduce long chain sugars to short chain sugars which are then fermented by the yeast and cause the exploding bottles.

https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pres ... cohol.html

The paper linked identifies the problem but unfortunately does not suggest any remedies.

[LeeH]

Never experienced that personally but quite interesting.

[IPA]

[quote=gr_baker post_id=837723 time=1538831404 user_id=1484
The paper linked identifies the problem but unfortunately does not suggest any remedies.
[/quote]

Could have been that they bottled at the wrong gravity ! Sounds like yet another internet myth in the making

[PhilB]

Hi IPA

Sounds like yet another internet myth in the making

... no, the diastatic power of dry-hops has been known about (by brewing scientists and brewers who read the Brewing Guardian, at least) since 1893, as reported in Ron Pattinson's blog there (link) ... it looks like the brewers in the linked article are experiencing the issues predicted/wondered about by Ron at the end of his blog post

Cheers, PhilB

[Kev888]

People have previously reported renewed activity after dry hopping, but I don't recall it catching anyone out with bombs. Seems unlikely to do so in a careful homebrew environment, but maybe with faster commercial turn-around comes greater risk (if the activity is slow and protracted enough).

Though for me, dry hopping has sometimes 'seemed' to kick things off again, but there hasn't been any associated reduction in gravity (large enough for me to detect, anyway). So I suspect the hops mostly just started liberating existing CO2 in my case.

[Critch]

I've noticed a reduction in gravity on commercial brews, there is definite merit in the research. as PhilB has mentioned this has been observed for a long period of time

[Robwalkeragain]

Yeah it's a bugger, not least mentioning the extra nucleation points in the barrel if it's unfiltered. Our dry hopped cask gets pretty excitable after 3 months