Well, okay the keg itself did not really explode but the contents did!
I brewed a smoked ale last fall using Briess smoked malt. I was not really happy with it as it was fairly band-aid phenolic. It was force carbed and I took it off tap after a few weeks of not wanting to really drink it. I set the keg aside in the basement. Ambient temp has been 52F all winter in the basement.
Today I wanted to take a sample to see if it had improved any. I took my sanitized pyrex baster, bled the pressure off the keg and started to draw a sample. As soon as I started drawing liquid into the baster PHLOOM! the beer starter gushing up out of the keg all over the floor! I quickly put the lid back in to stop it. I opened it again and it did not continue. I was able to draw a sample then. My first thought was, well maybe it got infected. The sample actually tasted much better than it had last fall, so I don’t think that was it.
Carbonation level was fine. I dunno about 2.5 volumes I would guess, about where I had left it. Again, it did not taste infected in anyway once I finally got the sample. Guess I will keep an eye on it.
If you disturb carbonated liquid can’t it cause a chain reaction and cause the CO2 to undissolve rapidly? Kind of like hitting the top of a bottle with the bottom of another bottle… (if your familiar with that trick.)
hmmm. No, I am not familiar with that trick. Maybe that was it. The beer was totally calm when I first opened the keg. Some bubbles on the surface but it wasn’t foaming until the baster started to draw liquid.
Just like dropping a tube of mentos in a 2 liter coke bottle.
There are plenty of very entertaining videos on youtube of guys doing this.
I doubt there’s an infection if you think it tastes good.
I think it is effervescence–Your baster served as nucleation sites.
enso, you folks up in Vermont must be a polite crew. Maybe it’s a Canadian influence. In any case I’m envious of such manners. Cuz if you’d grown up in corn country, you would’ve learned that trick of making your buddy’s beer foam all over the place shortly after you had learned to walk.
but then, considering what we drank back then, letting your beer spill out onto the floor wasn’t such a bad use of it!
