How many volumes of CO2 can a standard brown bottle safely hold?

Brewing Processes
1

I have a Dubbel that I want to bottle with lots of carbonation.  I don’t have any champagne bottles, just lots of standard 12 ounce bottles.  How many volumes of CO2 can safely go into a 12 ounce crown top bottle and what are people out there recommending for carbonation for a dubbel?

2

3 vol or so would be typical, and at that level they should be fine. I’ve heard of people having issues starting around 4 vol.

3

Thanks!

4

Be very careful.  The pitifully cheap Sam Adams bottles are paper thin and would break in a heartbeat.  I can’t blame them for using light bottles since weight costs money to ship.

I used to have cases of the old returnable Budweiser bottles that are very tough.  I haven’t bought Pacifico Clara, but I remember it used to come in brown bottles that you could club people to death with.  Tough!  I’d bet that they would easily handle 3 or 4 volumes.

5

Not the definite answer, but weigh the bottles to get and idea of how much glass is there.  For a ~12 oz bottle, more glass will be stronger, but there are always shape to consider and surface imperfections that can make the bottle weaker.  Some are in the 195 gram range, for one use then then to be crushed and recycle the glass type bottles.  Some older ones like Martin talks of are in the 280+ range.  Some of the Belgian bottles I brought back years ago are 350 grams.  Those are designed to hold more pressure as the beer they held was lively.

6

Those bottles will hold quite a lot of pressure. However, I caution you…

Maybe try a controlled experiment with sugar water. Fill a carefully selected series of bottles with sugar water and yeast increasing the SG in successive bottles. Say start one with 3 volumes, increase to 3.25 in the next, then 3.5 and so forth.

Store them in a plastic bin or garbage bag line box and close it. Wear safety glasses and a few weeks later give the container a light kick to see if a bottle pops. I’d do that before touching or reaching in.

Now the one’s that hold hella pressure are those little Belgian brown stubbies. If you can collect those they’ll hold gushers no problem.

7

You want a light bottle try a Michelob Amber Bock.  Those things’ll make your Sam Adams bottle seem like one of those death clubs you mentioned.