Flat Earth GOP Ale explodes, batch recalled
By William Brand
Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 9:48 am in Craft Beer, General.
It’s not exactly the answer to Democratic prayers, but Convention Ale, a commorative beer brewed by Flat Earth Brewing Co. to mark the Republican Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul this week has been pulled off the market. The reason: Exploding bottles.
The craft brewery has been plagued by exploding bottles all summer, so when they got a report that a single bottle of Convention Ale had exploded, they recalled the entire batch, all the bottles as a precaution. Wouldn’t want them blowing up in VP nominee Sarah Pallin’s hands, although she’s apparently a moose hunter, and no doubt drinks swill lager. (Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me she goes for Alaskan Smoked Porter.)
A Flat Earth employee, Mike Elias, said the problem has tentatively been traced to a washer, which didn’t completely remove residual yeast from the bottles. And by blowing up, we mean the pressure in the bottle popped the cap. The bottles didn’t explode.
Anyone who has had a homebrewing misadventure knows what happens when you over prime your homebrew. Whoops!
Flat Earth, by the way, refers to the fact that the prairies extending west from Minneapolis-St. Paul are flat. It’s not a reference to the belief that the Earth is actually flat, not round.
Aout the beer. It is/was a Belgian-style brown ale, Mike says. What’s going to happen to the beer? “I guess we’ll drink it,” he said (smiling).
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September 8th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Are you sure the cap only popped? With the previous bottles they were quite literally exploding sending broken glass shards everywhere. Other bottles were infected.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:54 am
I asked. They said, cap popped. They must have super-primed the beer. Or maybe it was G-d intervening for the Democrats.
September 16th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Jim, the previous bottles were not infected.
“plagued by exploding bottles all summer” is extremely overstated.
September 17th, 2008 at 7:38 am
[...] didn’t realize this til after I had opened the beer, but this brew has had strange problems whereas quite a few of the bottles have spontaneously exploded, sending shards of glass everywhere. [...]
September 19th, 2008 at 8:31 am
What doesn’t ‘wash’ for me is that a failure to remove residual yeast would cause a cap to pop. It would be more a case of the level of consumable sugars, right? Whether there are 100 yeast cells or 100 billion in the bottle, the available sugars would be divided among the yeast. At worst, there would just be an excess of yeast settling out at the bottom.
If the bottle washer is indeed the culprit, then what it is failing to remove isn’t yeast, it’s the rogue critters that are causing extreme carbonation and the sour flavor of infection.
September 20th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Brewedlyhooked 13..That sounds right to me. The only time I ever experienced blowing bottle caps was when we put too much priming sugar in the bottles… tablespoons instead of a scant teaspoon full. That was a wild night. Boom! Boom! Boom~ The bottles ddin’t crack, thank goodness, but the caps blew.