Glossary
Bottle bomb
A bottle that fails under pressure from continued fermentation, throwing glass — the one genuine physical hazard in homebrewing.
Caused by bottling before fermentation has finished, by over-priming, by wild-yeast contamination that ferments residual dextrin, or by hop creep in heavily dry-hopped beer.
The practical precautions are straightforward: confirm stable gravity over several days before packaging, measure priming sugar rather than estimating it, and store bottles in a sealed box or crate. If a batch begins producing gushers, treat the rest as suspect — chill it, which slows fermentation, and open the remainder carefully somewhere the glass would be contained.
This applies to homebrewing. Commercially packaged beer is filled and pressure-tested to specification and does not present this risk.
Related
- Gushing — The warning sign that usually comes first.
- Stuck fermentation — A common underlying cause.
- Priming — The step to get right.
More vocabulary
Acetaldehyde · Autolysis · Diacetyl · DMS · Gushing · Lightstrike · Oxidation · Staling
See every term on the glossary index.
Last reviewed 2026-08-16.
Evidence
What BeerHQ knows about this, and how. Every statement carries the state of the evidence behind it rather than being presented flatly as fact.
A bottle bomb is a container taken past its rated pressure. Packages are rated, that rating can be exceeded by continued fermentation, and warming the package raises the pressure further because CO₂ is less soluble in warm beer.
Checked against the source
Source: Thongon et al., "Mathematical modeling and optimization of pasteurization for the internal pressure and physical quality of canned beer" (2023), results, internal pressure and can bulging (Heliyon 9(11):e21493)