Troubleshooting - Over Pressure (Bursting)

It's happened to many of us. Suddenly, cans of your beer start popping or bursting, making a mess and creating a safety risk. Bursting beer cans or bottles are typically caused by over-carbonation resulting from some form of additional fermentation in the closed container. If you are faced with this problem, Escarpment Labs is here to help you through it. 

Root causes of overcarbonation and bursting beer cans or bottles:

1. Fermentation cooled too soon resulting in incomplete fermentation that continues in package.
2. Cross-contamination by diastatic yeast (diastaticus).
3. Cross-contamination by non-diastatic but more attenuative yeast (e.g. Cali Ale in a Foggy London beer).
4. Refermentation resulting from dry hop amylase enzymes (hop creep).


Questions we ask to help troubleshoot an overcarbonation issue: 

1. Do you use diastatic yeast (e.g. saison yeast) in the facility? When was it last used?
2. Was a forced fermentation test completed? 
3. Is the beer dry-hopped? How long is it dry-hopped? Do you see additional fermentation during dry hop (hop creep)? 
4. Was the beer packaged before/after a beer fermented with saison yeast (STA1+ yeast)? 

Additional Resources

Diastaticus 101 on YouTube
Low-cost lab setup on YouTube 
Forced Fermentation Test Blog Post

Other key words: overpressure, bursting, exploding

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